Engineer Skot creates the Bitaxe — the first open-source ASIC Bitcoin miner — by reverse-engineering a commercial Bitmain chip and building fully open hardware and firmware (AxeOS) around it. A compact, low-power board that solo mines over Wi-Fi, no computer required.
Bitaxe brought the cypherpunk ethos back to Bitcoin mining. While industrial miners dominated hashrate, Bitaxe proved that anyone could participate in securing the network from home. Multiple solo Bitaxe operators have found full blocks, with combined payouts exceeding $1 million — lottery-ticket mining made real.
Bitaxe on GitHub