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An orphan block is a valid block that gets rejected because another block at the same height was accepted first by the network.

A blockchain fork occurs when a cryptocurrency’s protocol splits into two separate chains, either temporarily or permanently.

Extra payment users attach to crypto transactions to incentivize miners to include them in blocks—a bonus on top of the block reward.

UTXO (Unspent Transaction Output) represents spendable cryptocurrency — like digital coins you can use. Essential for understanding Bitcoin transactions.

SHA-256 is the cryptographic hash algorithm used by Bitcoin and some other cryptocurrencies for mining and securing their blockchains.

RandomX is a CPU-optimized mining algorithm designed to resist ASICs and FPGAs by using random code execution and memory-intensive operations.

KAWPOW is a GPU-friendly mining algorithm used by Ravencoin that resists ASIC mining through random program generation and memory-intensive operations.

Equihash is a memory-hard mining algorithm designed to resist ASICs and favor GPU mining through high RAM requirements.

Blake3 is a cryptographic hashing algorithm used by some cryptocurrencies for mining, designed to be extremely fast on both CPUs and GPUs.

An ASIC miner is specialized hardware built to mine one specific cryptocurrency algorithm with maximum efficiency and speed.