6. Understanding Key Concepts

What the Cardano team did with the Ouroboros is to divide physical time into epochs made of slots. These so-called epochs operate in an annular fashion whereby when one epoch ends; another comes online. This helps to reduce network congestion and save on gas fees.

The epochs are divided further, with each having a slot leader chosen by other nodes. These slot leaders will see the creation and confirmation of transaction blocks to be added to the blockchain. If the selected slot leader cannot create a transaction block in an epoch, the next slot leader will have a go.