Tomorrow at 12:00 PM CST, BASED Mining Co opens the doors on it's mining platform... and it's doing it with a 3333-piece limited collection called BLOCKZ that doubles as the entry pass into the pool's inaugural Block Party event this Friday, May 22. Bitcoin Pizza Day.
For anyone watching the home-mining over the past year, this is the launch a lot of people have been waiting for. Here's what's actually being released, what it does, and why the broader BASED ecosystem already has weight behind it before a single mint goes live.
Before getting into the drop, the basics. BASED Mining Pool is a real solo Bitcoin mining pool...a full Bitcoin node, a patched stratum server, real hashpower pointed at the real chain. When the pool finds a block, the reward splits two ways at the protocol level, enforced by Bitcoin consensus itself:
1 BTC goes to whoever's worker actually found the block
~2.1 BTC (plus transaction fees) is split across all miners who participated in the round, weighted by the shares each contributed
This isn't a promise from an operator. It's a coinbase split, hardcoded into the block itself. No trust required, no operator discretion, no middleman holding funds.
What BASED Mining Co has built on top of that pool is a way for anyone, without owning a single ASIC, to point hashpower at it from an EVM wallet on Base or Ethereum Mainnet.
Tomorrow's launch isn't just the BLOCKZ collection. Alongside it, BASED is opening multiple ongoing hashpower rental tiers that will remain available indefinitely after the BLOCKZ drop sells out.
The mechanic is simple: pick a tier, mint, and the platform automatically points hashpower on your behalf at the BASED pool under a worker name uniquely derived from your wallet. Your shares are tracked. Your spot on the leaderboard is yours. When the pool hits a block, you get a proportional cut of the 2.1 BTC pool reward, paid out in cbBTC directly to your wallet on Base. Home miners with physical machines get paid out in native Bitcoin.
The tiers vary in price and rental duration. The full breakdown will be live on basedmining.xyz at launch.
These rentals are not the BLOCKZ collection. They're the permanent platform. The BLOCKZ collection is something else...and that's where it gets interesting.
The BLOCKZ collection is the headline launch, a one-time, limited release of 3333 hashpower NFTs that doubles as the entry ticket to the inaugural Block Party this Friday.
Each BLOCK is, in the most practical sense, a ticket. When you mint, your NFT gets assigned a piece of real Bitcoin hashpower that goes live during the Block Party. During the event, that hashpower hunts alongside every other BLOCK holder's allocation. If the pool finds a block during the party... 1 BTC goes to the finder, 2.1 BTC gets split across all the holders who participated.
That's the shot. One person hits the lottery, everyone else who showed up gets a piece of the prize pool.
The BASED team has been clear about not overpromising. They are not saying the pool will find a block this weekend. Solo mining is probabilistic, at the pool's current hashpower, blocks come when they come. They might come in 48 hours. They might come in six months.
Every share contributed during the Block Party is recorded permanently to the leaderboards. When the pool eventually hits a block, those shares count toward each holder's slice of the 2.1 BTC. The Block Party is the kickoff event. The hunt continues after.
A dozen-plus solo miners have already found Bitcoin blocks this year, including operations running single ASICs out of garages and basements. It happens. The point of pooling is that more participants means more lottery tickets shot out every ten minutes, and the prize is shared when one of them wins.
If BLOCKZ sells out, the collective hashpower pointed at the chain during the party becomes genuinely meaningful, and the pool's odds of finding a block move from "long shot" to "real shot."
What separates BLOCKZ from your average 3333-piece utility drop is that someone actually made the art.
BASED Mining Co founder partnered with Base OG @filter8 to design the collection. Each BLOCK is fully 3D animated and interactive, not a static PFP, not a layered 2D generative. Cubes you can rotate, inspect, and view in AR.
The vision came from BASED. Filter ran with it and made it real. The founder added a handful of traits and a small set of 1/1s scattered throughout the collection, but Filter8 is the one who put the visual identity together. By all accounts he's also wrapping up a companion app that'll let collectors view and interact with their BLOCKZ, and BASED has confirmed the underlying design system will be open-sourced after launch, so other builders can design their own cubes and play with them in AR.
It's a level of care for the art side that most utility-focused drops don't bother with.
The majority of the BLOCKZ collection wears noggles, a deliberate tribute to NounsDAO. Classic Nouns traits, reimagined and transformed into blockz. As the founder put it on X: we're hunting Bitcoin blocks with BASED Mining Co, so it felt right that our hashpower NFTs would actually be blocks. ⌐◨-◨
That tribute isn't decorative. It's the connective tissue to a partnership that's already paying dividends.
What's quietly notable about this launch is that BASED is not arriving alone. Several meaningful collaborations are already live or queued up:
BasedNouns DAO The Base-native Nouns DAO formally voted to partner with BASED Mining Co, and dozens of BasedNouns members will be participating in this Friday's Block Party. It's the kind of DAO-to-pool relationship that doesn't really exist anywhere else in the Bitcoin mining space, and the BLOCKZ Nouns tribute makes the alignment concrete rather than aspirational.
Gem Miner The onchain game has integrated BASED Mining directly into its experience. Players are mining alongside actual Bitcoin hashpower, with the game layer translating pool participation into a visual experience complete with in-game prizes. It's the cleanest example yet of a gaming-meets-real-mining crossover on Base.
Megapot The onchain lottery, currently sitting on a prize pool of over $1M with $1 tickets, is integrated into the BASED platform. Players have a path to participate in both the BASED pool and the Megapot draw from the same surface.
Each of these on its own would be a notable launch partner. Together, they suggest BASED isn't dropping into a vacuum — there's a network forming around the pool before its first major retail moment.
Time: 12:00 PM CST, tomorrow
Price: 0.0088 ETH per BLOCK
Supply: 3333 total, limited and one-time
Where: Opensea (live mint), plus the always-available rental tiers launching the same day on basedmining.xyz
Block Party: Friday, May 22: Bitcoin Pizza Day
Once a BLOCK is minted and activated, holders can log into basedmining.xyz and find their personal dashboard, live hashrate, accepted shares, leaderboard position, all real-time.
There's been a lot of talk over the past two years about a "home mining renaissance" and about bringing Bitcoin mining onchain in a meaningful way. Most of what's been shipped under those banners has been thin..token-wrapped paper claims, opaque rental schemes, vague jackpot promises.
What BASED is launching tomorrow is different mostly because the underlying mining is real. The pool exists. The hashpower is real. The coinbase split is enforced by Bitcoin itself, not by a smart contract holding everyone's tokens hostage. The art was actually made. The partnerships are actually voted in.
Whether BASED finds a block this Friday is genuinely up to the chain...that's the point of solo mining. But the platform underneath the Block Party isn't going anywhere. It'll be there next week, next month, and through every retarget after. The leaderboards are permanent. The hunt is ongoing.
For anyone who's wanted a real seat at the Bitcoin mining table without writing a bigcheck for an ASIC machine and a power contract, tomorrow is the door opening.
See you at the Block Party.
BASED Mining Co operates BASED Mining Pool, a solo Bitcoin mining pool with a hybrid coinbase-split payout structure. The pool runs on infrastructure in New York with disaster recovery in Mexico City. Follow @basedminingco on X for live pool stats and Block Party coverage.