_ Here's how it works: Anybody can ask a question Anybody can answer The best answers are voted up and rise to the top up vote down vote favorite 7 If I understand it right, a stale block is a block for which an earlier confirmation has been found and was accepted by majority of people.This block is considered invalid and is later never used.But what is a orphaned block.How is it created?How is it verified that it is orphaned and what is done to the orphaned block?terminology orphaned-blocks stale-block up vote down vote Stale blocks: At any second, a block may be "solved."This means that everyone else in the world working on that block must stop, and restart their work.Continuing to work after that point is known as working on a "stale block" because it is old data, and old transactions.My understanding is the term stale is much more commonly applied to shares when mining in a pool, so you're more likely to hear about stale shares than stale blocks.

In this case, the pool probably wouldn't even bother checking whether the share actually solved a block or not.Orphaned blocks: Detached or Orphaned blocks are valid blocks which are not part of the main chain.They can occur naturally when two miners produce blocks at similar times or they can be caused by an attacker (with enough hashing power) attempting to reverse transactions.My own understanding is that orphaned blocks are initially accepted by the majority of the network, but are later rejected when proof of a longer blockchain is received that doesn't include that particular block.This means that a user could see a transaction as having one confirmation and then, if a longer blockchain was received that didn't include the transaction, it could change back to 0 confirmations.up vote down vote There are several definitions with overlapping meanings.The first is perhaps best called extinct blocks.These are blocks that were produced by building on an block that is no longer the active tip of the chain.

Some nodes may have considered it to be the best block at some point, but they switched to another chain which does not contain the relevant block anymore.They are valid, verified, and their ancestry up to the genesis block is fully known - they're just not currently 'active'.They are sometimes called stale blocks (typically in the context of mining software realizing it built on old data) or orphan blocks.The latter name originates from the fact that payouts from extinct blocks are denoted as "orphaned" in the reference client (referring to the fact that their coinbase transactions are now orphaned).However, there also exist real orphan blocks, with orphan in its original meaning of "having no parent".These are blocks received by a node that does not have its entire ancestry (yet) and thus cannot be validated.Nodes keep such blocks in memory, while asking their peers to fill in the gap of their history.The client does not show these, so when people talk about orphan blocks, they are most likely referring to extinct blocks.

Note that since Bitcoin Core v0.10, there are no such orphan blocks anymore, due to a significant change in the download mechanism.Terminology is confusing here :) Your Answer Sign up or log in Sign up using Google Sign up using Email and Password Post as a guest Name Email discard By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.dogecoin hardwareBrowse other questions tagged terminology orphaned-blocks stale-block or ask your own question.alex jones bitcoin crashJump to: navigation, search An orphan block is a block that doesn't have a known parent in the longest block chain.bitcoin diggingNot to be confused with a Stale Block, which is a well-formed block which is no longer part of the difficultywise-longest and well-formed blockchain.

The Block Reward in a stale block is no longer spendable on the difficultywise-longest and well-formed blockchain; therefore whoever mined that block does not actually get the reward (or the transaction fees).This phenomenon must be taken into account by mining pools that use any payout strategy other than "proportional".Detached or Orphaned blocks are valid blocks which are not part of the main chain.They can occur naturally when two miners produce blocks at similar times or they can be caused by an attacker (with enough hashing power) attempting to reverse transactions.Next Page >> Next Page >>English Bahasa Indonesia Dansk Deutsch English Español Français Italiano Magyar Nederlands Polski Português Brasil Română Slovenščina Svenska Türkçe Ελληνικά български Русский Українська العربية فارسی हिन्दी 한국의 日本語 简体中文 繁體中文 Bahasa Indonesia Dansk Deutsch English Español Français Italiano Magyar Nederlands Polski Português Brasil Română Slovenščina Svenska Türkçe Ελληνικά български Русский Українська العربية فارسی हिन्दी 한국의 日本語 简体中文 繁體中文 Orphan Block This definition comes from the technical glossary.

Definition Blocks whose parent block has not been processed by the local node, so they can’t be fully validated yet.Synonyms Orphan block Not To Be Confused With Stale block Developer Guide What are orphaned and stale blocks?What is an Orphan Block?There are plenty of people out there who are upset at the amount of computing power and electricity that is currently going into Bitcoin mining, and these people would likely be even more upset after learning about the intricacies of orphaned blocks.Although the first person to find a particular block’s hash is the individual who gets to take home the block reward and have their proof of work placed in the blockchain forever, the reality is that these blocks are sometimes found at nearly the same time by multiple parties.There can be only one winner in the lottery known as Bitcoin mining, so one of these winners will find out that they will not actually receive a block reward if their new entry into the blockchain was not used by the next block’s miner.

The Blocks are Not the Orphans One of the main reasons that orphaned blocks are a confusing topic of conversation for even some of the experienced Bitcoin miners is that the terminology is a bit off.After all, orphaned blocks are not actually orphans because they do have parents in the form of the previous blocks in the chain.The part of the blocks that are actually orphaned are the payouts.It is likely that this incorrect terminology began due to the fact that these “stale blocks” are referred to as orphaned blocks in the Bitcoin reference client.It’s actually possible for orphaned blocks to also have children of their own.How Often Do Orphaned Blocks Appear?Although orphaned blocks can be quite a headache for miners, they actually occur more often than most Bitcoin enthusiasts would like to admit.Blockchain.info keeps track of all the orphaned blocks that appear on the network, and there is usually 1-3 of these mishaps every single day of the week.There is a new block mined roughly every ten minutes, which means there are 144 block rewards available to miners every day.

This also means a little over 1% of the blocks that are mined every day are orphaned.Orphaned Blocks and 51% Attacks In addition to situations where two or more miners have found a block at roughly the same point in time, orphaned blocks can also pop up in attack situations.The infamous 51% attack is one of the few flaws of the Bitcoin blockchain where an attacker can use their majority share of the network hashrate to create their own version of the blockchain.The longest chain is the most important factor when it comes to which block is going to be viewed as valid by the Bitcoin network, but a miner who owns 51% of the network is able to work on their own blockchain at a faster rate than everyone else.In other words, an attacker could create their own chain of orphaned blocks in order to take control of the Bitcoin ledger.If someone is able to centralize power over Bitcoin’s history of events, then they also have the power to double-spend their bitcoins and block others from using the network.