Orphan
An orphan, in the context of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, is a block that does not have any connection to other blocks in the chain. Orphans occur when two miners produce competing blocks at roughly the same time. The network then has to choose which one of them will be accepted as part of the legitimate blockchain, while discarding the other one due to its lack of connectivity with other blocks. This discarded block becomes an orphan, since it is no longer connected to the main chain.
Orphans are generally not harmful for a blockchain network; however, they can lead to delays in processing transactions as well as creating additional overhead for miners who must re-verify all transactions contained within each block before being able accept it into their own version of the ledger (blockchain). In addition, orphans may also contribute to increased difficulty levels by adding new hashes onto existing ones without providing enough work or “proof” that these hashes were properly solved. As such, some mining pools attempt minimize potential orphans by utilizing techniques such as “bundled mining” where multiple miners join together on a single task instead of running solo operations individually.
In summary: An orphan block is a valid but unconnected piece of data in a larger blockchain that cannot be used due to its lack of connectivity with other blocks on the network. While this typically doesn’t cause any major harm directly related to security issues or consensus protocols — they can still create delays and extra work for miners attempting verify them — making them best avoided whenever possible through various optimization strategies employed by miners themselves or via pooling resources from multiple small-time operators into larger entities capable tackling much bigger tasks more efficiently than could ever be done alone.
