Glossary · Mining Pools
Orphan block
Also: orphaned block, stale block
An orphan block, more precisely a stale block, is a valid block that loses out to a competing block found at nearly the same time, so its reward is never spendable and a pool that mined it earns nothing for that round.
Related terms
- Stale share
- A stale share is a share submitted after the pool has already moved on to a new block, usually because of network latency, and it earns nothing because it no longer contributes to a block the pool can still find.
- Block time
- Block time is the interval between consecutive Bitcoin blocks, which the difficulty adjustment targets at ten minutes on average, or about 144 blocks a day, although individual intervals vary widely.
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