Starknet Resumes Operations After Downtime
Starknet, a layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum, has resumed operations after experiencing a disruption that lasted over four hours on Monday morning. The issue was first noted shortly before 5:00 AM ET when the production of blocks on the mainnet came to a standstill, prompting developers to investigate the underlying cause.
Details of the Disruption
During this downtime, an alert communicated through the network’s Telegram channel indicated that developers had paused block production due to a detected proving error linked to a transaction.
“For safety, we have halted sequencing as we review the integrity of the chain and the consistency of its state. All transactions are currently on hold,”
read the message. An update posted around 7:00 AM ET revealed that a bug had been located, leading the team to engage in further testing, validation, and evaluation of any potential downstream impacts.
Restoration of Services
The operational status was finally restored as the blockchain was reverted to a previous state at block 5187263, with the network functioning again by approximately 9:00 AM ET. An announcement posted on the social media platform X confirmed that Starknet was fully operational, warning users that transactions submitted between 9:24 AM and 9:42 AM UTC might not have processed correctly. The network promised to provide a comprehensive report detailing the timeline of events, the causes of the outage, and strategies for future prevention.
Historical Context and Future Developments
The recent downtime is not an isolated incident for Starknet; it marks the second outage in a few months. A previous disruption linked to the successful Grinta upgrade in September led to over five hours of inactivity and resulted in two chain reorganizations, which reverted around 80 minutes of transactions.
Market Impact
While primarily focused on enhancing Ethereum’s capabilities, Starknet has diversified its offerings with the introduction of Bitcoin staking in September, allowing users to stake Bitcoin directly within the ecosystem while earning rewards in the native STRK token. Fortunately, the price of STRK remained relatively stable during the outage, dipping less than 1% in the past 24 hours to $0.090, but still reflecting an 11% increase over the week. Ethereum, in contrast, saw a modest increase of 2% on the day, currently trading at $3,192, marking a nearly 9% rise over the last week.
