Timestamp
ProtocolThis term is part of the Bitcoin glossary — See all terms
A block's timestamp records roughly when it was mined, and consensus rules keep those claimed times honest and close to real time.
Every block header carries a timestamp: the miner's claim about when the block was produced. It is not trusted blindly. Consensus requires the value to be greater than the median timestamp of the previous eleven blocks — the MTP rule — and no more than two hours ahead of network time, so no single miner can pretend the block is far older or newer than it really is.
That window is what keeps difficulty adjustments and locktime-based payments on track. Because each block prints its time, this site can display the real mining times, compare them with the claimed timestamps and surface warp anomalies: long streaks of suspicious times would hint that someone is bending the rules to keep mining cheap.
