The Ethereum layer-2 protocol Starknet experienced a block reorganization that resulted in a backlog of transactions. Starkscan, the protocol’s block monitoring tool, showed a four-hour outage in block production. There was a gap between the creation of blocks on April 4, but Starknet’s official status page did not reflect any outages on that day. Starknet later released a statement explaining that a rounding error bug caused the block reorganization, leading to a full capacity transaction backlog. During this time, new transactions could not be accepted and were rejected, and some transactions were reverted due to changing parameters.
reached out to Starknet for further information and confirmation but has not received any additional details regarding whether block production was halted. The last major outage reflected on Starknet’s status page occurred on March 13 due to Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade, which caused slow block creation.
Starknet is not the only blockchain network to experience issues recently. Solana, another prominent network, suffered a significant outage in early February 2024. The block production downtime on Solana’s mainnet halted the network’s progression for over five hours. This was not the first time Solana had faced such problems, as it had experienced several significant outages and partial or major outage days since January 2022.
In the recent Solana outage, it was discovered that a bug in the Just-in-Time (JIT) compilation cache, which compiles all programs before executing a transaction, was the cause. The old loader system was being replaced with a new motor system, but it was scheduled to be disabled with an updated version. Someone intentionally called the old instruction set, leading to issues and an infinite loop.
Solana also encountered problems in early April, with approximately 75% of all transactions on the network failing due to an influx of activity related to memecoin trading. Analysts believe that these failed transactions are primarily due to bot activity seeking arbitrage trades on Solana.
Both Starknet and Solana have faced various issues and outages Highlighting the challenges blockchain networks encounter as they navigate technical vulnerabilities and increased activity on their platforms.
