Orphaned Slot 13505944
Question
Why was the block at slot 13505944 orphaned despite containing a valid-looking payload with 909 transactions and 21 blobs?
Background
On January 20, 2026 at 07:49:11 UTC, validator 715575 (blockscape_lido) proposed a block at slot 13505944. The block achieved only 0.46% head votes.
The slot overview showed a late block (~2.9s) with a heavy payload (60M gas, 21 blobs), but even late heavy blocks typically achieve far higher head accuracy.
Investigation
Head Vote Accuracy
Surrounding slots achieved 98-99% head accuracy. Slot 13505944 managed 0.46%.
View Query: stale_parent_head_accuracy
Who Voted For It?
The only entity that voted for the block was all of the proposer's own operator's validators: blockscape_lido. This suggests that these validators were all running on the same node.
View Query: stale_parent_head_voters
The Stale Parent
The proposed block's parent_root points to slot 13505925 – 19 slots behind the chain tip at slot 13505943.
| Field | Slot 13505944 (Proposed) | Expected (Canonical) |
|---|---|---|
| Beacon parent | Slot 13505925 | Slot 13505943 |
| Exec payload parent hash | 0xdbf1fc25... (block 24274582) | 0xa113a54b... (block 24274600) |
| Exec payload block number | 24274583 | 24274601 |
The proposer's node was stuck 19 slots (~3.8 minutes) behind the chain head. The block is valid on its own fork. However, the canonical chain has 19 slots of accumulated attestation weight that a single block cannot overcome.
Client Logs
A smple of logs from our nodes:
- Reth:
"Block added to fork chain" - Nethermind:
"Non consecutive block commit. Last: 24274600. New: 24274583" - Lighthouse:
block: "… empty"
Takeaways
- The proposer's node was stuck 19 slots behind the chain tip, building on slot 13505925 instead of 13505943
- The block is valid on its own fork, but fork choice could never prefer it over the canonical chain's 19 slots of accumulated weight
- 0.46% head accuracy – only 142 of 30,577 attestations voted for a block on a stale fork and all of them came from the proposer operator's own validators