ViaBTC, the third-largest mining pool globally, is launching an auction for the "epic sat" discovered during Bitcoin's fourth halving event on April 20.

In an announcement on April 23, ViaBTC revealed that the auction is happening on the CoinEx crypto exchange and will conclude by April 26. The announcement states:

"The auction for Sat 1,968,750,000,000,000 — one of only four epic sats in the Bitcoin ecosystem — has officially commenced!"

"Epic sat" refers to the initial satoshi generated after each halving event, occurring approximately every four years after 210,000 blocks. With only 32 epic sats expected to exist, these units hold exceptional significance within the Bitcoin network.

CoinEx mentioned that bidding for this rare asset would be in Bitcoin, with a minimum bid of 1 BTC. As of press time, the highest bid for the asset is 2 BTC, roughly equivalent to $132,000, according to the auction page.

Interestingly, before the halving, Foundry USA, the largest BTC mining pool, had planned to leverage the scarcity of "epic sats." The company had assured its customers that it would make concerted efforts to monetize the halving block and distribute 100% of the proceeds to pool members. However, ViaBTC was the fortunate pool to mine the block, so it remains unclear whether the firm intends to redistribute the auction profits entirely to miners.

Isolation of halving block rewards

In the meantime, ViaBTC separated the rewards from mining the fourth halving block and temporarily halted payouts to miners.

On April 20, the pool received 40.75 BTC, equivalent to $2.6 million, for successfully mining the halving block, which reduced miners' rewards from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. Notably, 37.6 BTC of this reward was related to validating transactions within the Runes protocol.

According to on-chain data, ViaBTC transferred the total reward of 40.75 BTC to a newly generated address.

Following these actions, several pool users raised concerns about the absence of BTC payout records for the halving block on their dashboard by April 21. In response, a ViaBTC representative assured users that the rewards were undergoing processing and would be completed promptly.