Base, the Ethereum layer-2 network nurtured by crypto exchange Coinbase, ground to a halt for over two hours on Thursday after a fault crept into the way the chain produces blocks, freezing activity across the network.
The trouble first surfaced around noon ET on Thursday, and the timing was awkward: it landed just hours before a scheduled network upgrade was due to go live.
Team says all funds are safe
At around 12:20 p.m. ET, the network posted on X: "Base Mainnet is currently halted while the team works on an issue with block production. All funds are secure, and we'll update below once resolved."
By about 1:00 p.m. ET the team had pinpointed the problem, but a fix did not come right away. Soon after, the network said blocks were being produced again and that apps and infrastructure were coming back online as their Base nodes restarted and resynced. Once node restarts were under way, recovery for each app and infrastructure provider was expected to be quick.
The real cause: one invalid block
On its status page, the network explained: "We continue to debug and have isolated a consensus problem that caused an invalid block to be sequenced. This prevented new blocks from being created."
About an hour later, the sequencing of new blocks started syncing normally again, even as the network kept digging for the root cause behind the failure.
First major hiccup in 90 days
According to its status page, Thursday's outage was the first block production and deposit issue on the network's mainnet in the last 90 days. Earlier, in May, the network had run into roughly 30 hours of withdrawal delays.
Coinbase had not offered any comment on the incident.
Beryl hardfork still in progress
The network is still in the middle of its Beryl hardfork upgrade. That upgrade is set to roll out a new token standard for stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) on the network, while also trimming down withdrawal delays.
Outages have hit other chains too
Blockchain outages are not a common sight, but they have troubled various networks from time to time, dragging down network activity when they strike.
Earlier this year, layer-1 network Sui was knocked offline on three days in a row after gas and validator bugs hit its mainnet. The prominent layer-1 network Solana also carries a history of major outages, although it has not flagged a mainnet issue since February 2024.
