- zkSync Era has experienced yet another outage.
- Developers have tipped a bug in the server as the cause.
- Despite recent outages, zkSync continues to record significant activity.
Despite being built to be more resilient than existing systems, some blockchains occasionally experience downtimes due to scaling bottlenecks or a lack of sufficient decentralization.
These downtimes appear to be more frequent on zkSync Era, a prominent Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution based on Zero Knowledge technology. Following occurrences on April 1 and December 16, block production on the network has again experienced another hours-long outage.
Block Production on zkSync Era Halts Again
For about four hours between 5:56 am UTC and 10:56 am UTC on Monday, December 25, no new blocks were produced on the zkSync Era mainnet, according to data from Uptime.com.
Chart showing zkSync Era’s sequencer health. Source: Uptime.com
Commenting on the outage, zkSync Era developers disclosed that a bug had triggered one of the network’s automated safety mechanisms.
The zkSync Era network is now fully operational. At 05:50 UTC, one of the network’s automated safety protocols was triggered by a bug in the server. This issue required teams to inspect and is now fully resolved.
We will share a full post-mortem report soon. Thank you for your…
— zkSync Developers (∎, ∆) (@zkSyncDevs) December 25, 2023
While the team has promised a full post-mortem report, it is unclear when it will be released. Developers had also promised a full post-mortem following a similar outage in April 2023. However, at the time of writing, DailyCoin has been unable to confirm that this report has been released.
Following a proof generation issue in May 2023, zkSync developers contended that issues like these were bound to happen due to the complexity and relative novelty of zkEVMs. However, they also asserted that the protocol improves with every resolved issue.
By TVL, zkSync is the fourth largest Ethereum Layer 2 network with $569 million, according to L2Beat data at the time of writing. The network continues to see the most activity among Ethereum Layer 2 chains with a TPS of 14.26, surpassing even Ethereum.
On the Flipside
- Upgrades are likely to improve the resilience of the zkSync Era network over time. The network is only ten months old.
- The bulk of activity on zkSync Era has been linked to airdrop farming.
- On December 15, Ethereum’s largest Layer 2 chain by TVL, Arbitrum, experienced an hours-long downtime due to a spike in inscriptions.
Why This Matters
The recent zkSync Era outage highlights that Ethereum Layer 2 technology is still evolving and yet to mature fully.
Read this for more on zkSync Era:
ZKSync User with 21K Wallets Exposes Flaw in Crypto Airdrops
Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal puts the project’s year in review. Find out more:
“A Painful Ride”: Polygon Founder Puts 2023 in Review
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