Censoring blocks don't get orphaned. MARA was mining blocks that did not have the highest fee transactions. If a miner/pool builds a valid block that merely omits certain transactions (OFAC list, "risk-graded" UTXOs, etc.), other miners do not orphan it. They extend the heaviest valid chain tip. Orphaning a valid-but-omissive block would require: - A coordination rule (social soft fork) to reject such blocks, or - A protocol change that makes omission invalid (not happening without civil war). So a censoring miner's blocks are paid normally. The cost they bear is opportunity cost (they skip some fees) and potentially slightly higher stale risk if their template construction is slower. That's it. I have not extensively looked into why MARA stopped, but my guess is it was a short-term test for the future. Predictive programming if you will. Fred Thiel would sacrifice his shareholder base in a nanosecond if it means he gets to sniff Trump's jockstrap.