Plain meaning
Start with the shortest useful explanation before going deeper.
The limited lifespan of a Solana transaction determined by its referenced blockhash. A transaction's blockhash must correspond to a block within the last 150 slots (~60-90 seconds) or the transaction is rejected as expired. This mechanism prevents replay attacks and bounds the time validators must track transaction deduplication. Durable nonces bypass mortality for use cases requiring long-lived transactions.