> How strict are the time validation rules? Very. > If the next block is mined more than 2 hours after the current block, would this not stall the blockchain? No. It doesn't break the rule *"Full nodes will not accept blocks with headers more than two hours in the future **according to their clock**."* Nor does it break the rule *"Must be strictly **greater than** the median time of the previous 11 blocks."* --- The above should be clear I hope, but in case it isn't, lets make an example: |Event |Time | |------------------------------|-------| |Last block mined | 08:00 | |Median time of last 11 blocks | 07:00 | |Current time on my clock | 11:00 | |Time on block arriving now | 12:59 | |Rule |Result| |----------------------|------| | (12:59 - 11:00) < 2 | OK | | 12:59 > 07:00 | OK | So no problem even though there's been a three hour gap instead of 10 minutes and even though the block has a timestamp that I think is nearly two hours in the future! Note that these particular rules are not broken if there is a huge (e.g. 50 year) gap between blocks. In theory everything would continue (barring some other issue - which seems likely)