Stacks Project Restores Block Production
On May 24, the Stacks project, a Layer 2 blockchain solution for Bitcoin, announced it has successfully restored block production following a critical issue with its node software. This disruption was traced back to a flaw in the stacks-node’s memory pool syncing logic, referred to by the developers as a case of “misbehavior.” In light of these developments, the team urged all node operators—especially those involved in mining and transaction signing—to upgrade their nodes to the newly released version 3.1.0.0.11 to ensure proper functionality.
Warnings and Bug History
The Stacks team has also issued a cautionary notice indicating that users might experience occasional interruptions in block production until all nodes are updated. This warning arrived shortly after developers pinpointed the root cause of the issues. A post-mortem report released on GitHub noted that the bug had its origins as far back as 2020, resulting in nodes providing incorrect responses to remote procedure calls linked to mempool synchronization.
The developers explained that these glitches led to a significant number of nodes becoming unresponsive, particularly when there was a higher volume of data to process during recent block transactions.
As per initial assessments, the new upgrade is designed to seamlessly integrate with existing chainstate directories from version 3.x.x.x.x. The problems first came to light on April 18 when Stacks developers had initially thought that a minor patch would rectify the situation without requiring node operators to take action. However, an investigation was launched on May 19 after delays in block production were associated with a Bitcoin fork that occurred at block number 897442. The situation worsened when many signers reverted to a prior version of the chainstate, leading to another block production halt just four days later.
