Orphan Block

An orphan block is a block that a miner successfully creates but that does not become part of the blockchain’s main history. This usually happens when two miners find valid blocks at nearly the same time and broadcast them to different parts of the network. For a short period, nodes may see two competing versions of the chain. The network resolves this by following the chain that gains the next valid block and becomes the longest or heaviest accepted chain, while the other block is left out.

Orphan blocks matter because they show how decentralized networks handle timing delays without a central coordinator. Transactions inside an orphan block are not permanently confirmed by that block, but they can usually be included again in a later block. The miner who produced the orphan block typically does not receive the block reward or transaction fees, because only blocks in the accepted chain are paid. A practical comparison is two people submitting the same page of a shared ledger at once: only the page that later additions build on becomes the official copy.