An unknown issue with Ethereum’s Beacon Chain led to a halt in transactions for almost half an hour on May 11.
At around 8:15 pm on Thursday May 11, several Ethereum core developers announced that the Beacon Chain had issues confirming transactions. New blocks may have been proposed but an unknown issue prevented them from being completed.
The beacon chain stopped terminating about thirty minutes later. I still don’t know why, but in general the chain is designed to be robust against this, transactions will continue as usual and termination will start when the problem is solved. pic.twitter.com/utAS0uAWpG
— superphiz.eth ️ (@superphiz) May 11, 2023
A similar issue occurred on March 15, where a low validator participation rate caused a delay in the Goerli testnet version of Ethereum’s “Shapella” upgrade, which was successfully implemented on April 12.
Beacon Chain is Ethereum’s original Proof-of-Stake blockchain that was first launched in 2020. On September 15, 2022, Ethereum’s pre-existing Proof-of-Work chain “merged” with Beacon Chain, ending the network transition to a faster and more environmentally friendly Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism.
After 25 minutes the mainnet began ending blocks once again, with Ethereum core developer and Prysmatic Labs co-founder Preston Van Loon announcing that “the end has been restored.”
The end is restored. We don’t know the root cause yet, but something is happening that causes multiple client implementations to work harder to maintain the chain.
— prestonvanloon.eth (@preston_vanloon) May 11, 2023
According to data from blockchain analytics provider Beaconcha.in, Ethereum’s period 200,552 to 200,554 witnessed a sharp and sudden decrease in the number of confirmations.
For context, a period is a period of 32 “slots” in which validators propose and certify for blocks. A period usually lasts about six minutes and 24 seconds.
The cause of the issue remains unclear, however Ethereum developers SAYS that the problem is being investigated so that it does not happen again.
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After the incident, the pseudonymous Ethereum consultant @Superphiz THE audience that the “diversity of the client” was one of the main reasons that the loss did not last long. However, he also pointed out that the eventual loss could be avoided if no client had more than 33% control.
Client diversity refers to the number of software clients available to network validators, and greater client diversity means a more secure and robust network for validators.
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