MARA Pool Ramps up Bitcoin Production as Uptime Improves

Bitcoin mining giant Marathon appears to be improving operational uptime, with its MARA Pool producing 4.88% of the bitcoin blocks in July thus far after months of downtime caused by hosting site issues.

Bitcoin blockchain data shows that MARA Pool mined 129 blocks in the first 18 days of July and received 417 BTC in block rewards, accounting for about 4.89% of the total network rewards. This implied an average production of 7.16 blocks per day, 37% more than the average in June.

MARA Pool’s production market share had been affected by operational downtime at Marathon’s hosting partners since earlier this year, which reached 2.56% in February before gradual improvement.

Applied Digital, Marathon’s hosting partner, began experiencing power outages at its Garden City and Ellendale sites in mid-January, causing downtime for Marathon that extended for months. In March, Marathon entered into a purchase agreement to acquire the Garden City facility from Applied Digital for $87.3 million.

According to Marathon’s production update for June, its average operating hashrate at the two sites combined was 10.6 EH/s, accounting for only 80% of the energized hashrate. Applied Digital said earlier this month that the Ellendale site was restored to full operating capacity at 180 MW.

If Marathon maintains the current operational uptime, it could set a new record of realized hashrate in July. Based on bitcoin’s network average of 588 EH/s so far this month, MARA Pool’s realized hashrate was effectively around 28.78 EH/s, excluding Marathon’s hashing power via joint ventures. The company’s previous realized hashrate record was 25.64 EH/s in December 2023.