The Avalanche network was down this morning, with block production at a standstill for over two hours. It seems that an update was the cause of this problem. We are looking into the reasons for this forced pause.
The Avalanche network down for two hours
Many users noted the obvious shutdown of the network early this morning. Avalanche’s C-Chain was unable to produce blocks for over two hours, prompting questions from the community:
Reporting live from https://t.co/YThVs0ApB0, it appears that block production on the Avalanche C-Chain has been at a halt for over 2 hours.
Authorities are still trying to determine the cause and emergency services are just arriving at the scene.
Back to you, Ron. pic.twitter.com/3wtyS2dRkX
– Emmanuel ⚡️ (@thepizzaknight_) March 23, 2023
Kevin Sekniqi, the co-founder of Avalanche, said the network had not been stable for “more than an hour,” and that the upgrade to the new version was at fault:
“It was a bug with version 1.9.12. The fix has just been launched, and the network is starting to stabilize again. “
The bug in question caused some nodes in the network to fail when checking transactions. Especially during the bootstrapping process, which recreates the blockchain at its final stage. Once the solution was published, the validators were able to update their nodes, and thus resume the production of blocks.
Hopefully few consequences for Avalanche
The bug had no major consequences for the Avalanche network. Some exchange platforms have however temporarily stopped AVAX deposits and withdrawals as a precautionary measure. This is the case of Upbit and Bithumb, as well as ThorSwap. They were then quickly unblocked.
The news caused temporary suspicion among some users, as Platypus, a decentralized finance protocol (DeFi) based on Avalanche, recently suffered a massive $8.5 million hack. But this was a simple bug, which was quickly corrected.
