A block without ancestry on a blockchain network, one that has been discarded.

An orphan block is a special kind of block on blockchain networks because they don’t seem to belong. Such a block may either contain no historical information, meaning that it has no parent block in the form of a connection to a block that was mined before it or has been discarded because of a similarly mined block. In both cases, an orphan block has no active use on the blockchain because it is irrelevant.

Orphan blocks are not possible currently, although they used to exist. However, these blocks occur from time to time when two blocks with the same information are broadcast to nodes at the same time. One is eventually validated and added to the network, while the other is discarded, making it an orphan block.

A convenient piece of paper with a cryptocurrency address and private key.

A paper wallet is a piece of paper that holds a crypto user’s digital address (public key) and private key. Both of the keys are still in encrypted form, although they are displayed as QR codes on the paper. Because they are easy to carry around, users can use them in place of their computers and mobile phones to share needed transaction information. So, a different user who wants to transact with them only needs to scan the QR code and get their public address.

Paper wallets are interesting in the sense that they cannot be hacked since they are physical pieces of paper. However, this also means that they can be lost or damaged.

The digital list of available orders for an asset or security that is arranged in increasing or decreasing order of price.

An order book refers to the electronic or digital list of available orders for an asset or security. This list contains two order classes: buy and sell orders. On an exchange, these order classes are clearly distinguished in colors and have different price ranges, although these differences are not always excessive. On Kyrrex Exchange, for example, buy orders are in green and sell orders are in red.

Apart from classification by order type, the main characteristic of an order book is that the list of open orders is organized by price in ascending or descending order.

An order book essentially allows a trader to know the different price conditions for buying or selling an asset. Thus, the trader can match orders manually or via an algorithm made available by the exchange platform.

Orphan Block

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