An epoch is Gonka's basic unit of time, trust, and money. It is a span of blocks with a fixed internal schedule: specific block heights within it trigger phase transitions that every participant's node watches independently, so there is no coordinator handing out assignments — everyone sees each transition at the same moment.

Every epoch answers three questions in order:

1. Who has compute? — the proof-of-compute generation window (the "Sprint").
2. Are they telling the truth? — the validation window, where participants cross-check each other's proofs.
3. Then let them work and get paid — the long middle of ordinary inference service, plus settlement at the boundary.

At the boundary between epochs, several things happen in quick succession: new compute weights are computed from accepted proofs, the validator set updates to match, the previous epoch's participants are paid their work coins and reward coins, vesting ticks forward, and models are reassigned for the incoming epoch. One block later, it's an ordinary epoch again.

In production configurations, reward vesting typically runs 180 epochs, described as roughly 180 days — so the practical rhythm to keep in mind is an epoch on the order of a day.

Most of an epoch isn't ceremony — it's the "long middle," where user inference requests dominate the transaction feed. The proof-of-compute and validation windows are comparatively brief bursts you'll see clustered near each boundary.

GNKScan's home page shows the current epoch number, its phase, and progress through that phase in the Epoch tile. For the full phase-by-phase breakdown, see Gonka Epochs Explained.