Ethereum, the second-largest blockchain by market capitalization, faced two technical issues within 24 hours, causing the network to stop finalizing blocks for over an hour on Friday. This has raised security concerns among its users.
The cause of these incidents remains unknown, but the Ethereum Foundation has explained that when blocks are not being finalized, pending transactions could be re-ordered or dropped from the network. Although Ethereum has resumed finalizing blocks, this marks the second performance issue in a short period.
These performance glitches could impact Ethereum's credibility among developers, as network reliability is essential for blockchains looking to attract users and capital. Historically, Ethereum has been considered one of the most stable networks on the market.
Toghrul Maharramov, a developer at Ethereum infrastructure startup Scroll, stated, "To be able to say whether or not the situation is the fault of the protocol design or an outcome of a bug, we need to first understand what actually happened."
Superphiz.eth, an Ethereum Beacon Chain community health consultant, clarified on Twitter that transactions do not halt due to finality issues like those Ethereum experienced recently. Despite the lack of finality having "zero impact on-chain activity," some services built on Ethereum may need to adjust operations in response to these finality issues. For instance, crypto exchange platform DYdX temporarily paused deposits due to the lack of Ethereum finality and continued to monitor the situation.
Superphiz.eth advised validators to "Increase your hardware spec if you can, switch to a minority client if you can. Apply patches when they're available," but also emphasized, "As bad as this looks, the chain keeps going and eventually finalizes."
