- Ethereum network faced another incident within 24 hours.
- Blocks were proposed but not validated for 25 minutes.
Ethereum, the second largest blockchain by cryptocurrency market value, experienced a technical issue on Friday. This issue caused a delay in the finalization of blocks on the network for nearly an hour.
The Ethereum Foundation explained that to modify or remove a block from the blockchain, at least 33% of the total staked ETH needs to be burned, which takes around 15 minutes and ensures the permanence of transactions.
On Friday at noon, the Ethereum network faced another similar issue within a short span of 24 hours. For about 25 minutes on Thursday, blocks were suggested but not confirmed. People in the cryptocurrency community have been discussing and guessing on social media about the cause of these interruptions, but no explanations have been given yet.
Prominent venture capitalist Adam Cochran stated:
“For more than an hour, the ETH beacon chain’s ability to reach finality has been disrupted. It has surpassed the threshold for inactivity and is now considered a liveness issue. We hope that this problem is limited to a specific client’s implementation and not a larger problem with the overall protocol. In any case, this situation is not favorable.”
On the other hand, some individuals remain unconcerned. Eric Conner, an important developer working on the Ethereum project, stated on Twitter that the network did not experience a complete outage, but rather encountered a problem specific to certain clients, which has since been resolved.
No matter when or why it happened, the ongoing discussion about finality will likely never come to a definite conclusion. There is a possibility that transactions can be rearranged or disregarded, appearing to be executed but not actually happening. At the moment, the network is functioning normally and processing blocks as usual. However, both users and developers should remain cautious.
