Ethereum, the world’s second-largest blockchain by cryptocurrency market cap, has recently experienced a technical issue that caused its network to halt finalizing blocks for over an hour. This event occurred on Friday and was the second of its kind in just 24 hours. The blockchain network lost finality for approximately an hour, meaning that blocks could be altered or removed from the blockchain without burning at least 33% of the total staked ETH.
The Ethereum Foundation, which oversees the Ethereum blockchain development, stated that finality takes about 15 minutes to ensure that a block cannot be altered or removed. However, this issue has been a cause for concern among users and developers alike, as the cause of these outages is still unclear.
Prominent venture capitalist and Ethereum supporter Adam Cochran expressed his concern over the issue on social media, saying that he hopes it is just an implementation issue for a single client to fix and not a larger protocol issue. Ethereum core developer Eric Conner, on the other hand, stated that the network did not go down and that the issue was due to a bug in some clients that has already been fixed.
Regardless of its origin or duration, the finality issue remains controversial. Transactions may appear to process, but the fact that they do not get finalized means that they can potentially be re-ordered or ignored. Pseudonymous Ethereum builder Superphiz tweeted a warning, claiming that a third wave of issues may arise, but he also reassured users that the chain would keep going and eventually finalize.
Currently, the Ethereum network is up and running again at full capacity, with blocks being finalized. However, users and developers are still on alert, and the cause of the issue remains unclear. Such technical issues can significantly impact the cryptocurrency market, as they can affect investors’ confidence and trust in the network. It remains to be seen how the Ethereum network will tackle this issue and what steps it will take to prevent similar issues from arising.
