Marathon Digital’s software helped increase their Bitcoin mining by 77% in May.

Bitcoin mining company Marathon Digital Holdings (MARA) generated 1,245 bitcoin in May, which is a 77% increase from the previous month thanks to its own software.

CEO Fred Thiel stated in a press release on Friday that “The increased production was due to an increased hash rate and a significant increase in transaction fees, which accounted for approximately 11.8% of the total bitcoin we earned in the last month.” The company also raised its operational computing power by 9% to 15.2 exahash/second (EH/S).

During an interview with CoinDesk TV on Friday, Thiel credited the majority of the increase to Marathon’s proprietary software. The software allows Marathon to manage the output, uptime, and hash rate of its machines.

In early May, miners experienced a surge in revenue because of higher transaction fees due to the popularity of Ordinals. This protocol allowed additional features on the bitcoin blockchain, such as non-fungible tokens and memecoins, increasing demand for block space. As a result, the fees miners earned for processing transactions surpassed block rewards.

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The 77% increase in Marathon’s May bitcoin production could likely be attributed to the fact that the company did not run its machines at full capacity in April, giving it more room to increase production in the following month.

Marathon explained in April that its 15% monthly decrease in bitcoin production was due to increased network difficulty, luck, and “to a lesser extent, curtailment activity.”

During April, Marathon mined the least amount of bitcoin per exahash of computing power out of 14 publicly listed miners, partly due to downtime of its mining machines. In comparison, during April, peer CleanSpark (CLSK) mined 78 bitcoin, Riot Platforms (RIOT) had 61, and Hive Blockchain (HIVE) produced 81 bitcoin per exahash.

Marathon’s shares on the Nasdaq fell approximately 2% on Friday, similar to other miners’ performance on the day.

Edited by Aoyon Ashraf.