Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 blockchain Base stopped producing blocks for 33 minutes on Tuesday after switching to a backup sequencer that wasn’t arrange correctly to course of transactions.
The incident started at 6:07 am UTC when the lively sequencer began falling behind on block manufacturing, prompting Conductor — Base’s system for managing sequencer availability and reliability — to modify sequencers.
Nevertheless, it switched to an “unhealthy mainnet sequencer” that was nonetheless being arrange and thus wasn’t capable of produce blocks, Base Construct’s X account stated in a put up on Tuesday.
Base creator Jesse Pollak stated the core workforce responded to the problem instantly, with the community totally recovered by 6:40 am UTC. Slightly extra time was taken to make sure a series reorganization wasn’t required, Base stated in its autopsy.
Base continues to be extremely centralized
The incident exposes Base’s reliance on centralized sequencers to deal with transactions at scale. Whereas a number of sequencers run, they rely completely on Conductor’s administration capabilities — making a single level of failure that may halt your complete community.
The workforce behind Base, which presently secures greater than $4.1 billion of whole worth locked, stated it could replace its infrastructure to make sure all sequencers within the cluster can deal with block-building duties if chosen.
Base’s solely different main community outage occurred on Sept. 5, 2023 — shortly after its public launch — the place block manufacturing was halted for 43 minutes.
Accountability taken by Base chief
Base’s head of engineering, who goes by “aflock” on X, stated that Base takes chain uptime very critically whereas including that it may’t “energy a worldwide economic system and not using a stable spine of a community.”
“Happy with the workforce for the fast response right here and glad we have discovered a number of methods to harden our techniques going ahead.”
Base’s community outage bullish, apparently
Some crypto pundits seen Base’s outage as bullish, together with former Coinbase engineer and Save Finance founder, 0xrooter, who stated: “individuals solely make a fuss about downtime for chains with precise customers.”
“Bullish downtime,” the pseudonymous developer added.
Helius Labs CEO Mert Mumtaz in contrast the incident to Solana, one other high-speed blockchain that has had its fair proportion of community outages through the years.
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Regardless of the safety challenges, Solana and Base stay among the many most used blockchains for retail customers, boasting the primary and fourth most lively addresses at 2.83 million and 1.09 million, respectively, DefiLlama knowledge reveals.
Solana is the second-largest chain by DeFi TVL at $9.6 billion, whereas Base sits at sixth.
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