Zilliqa announces permanent fix after latest bug halts block production

Zilliqa developers have announced a permanent fix for a bug that forced the blockchain to halt transactions over the weekend.

Zilliqa developers explained in their last X post that they were working to fix a bug that prevented the blockchain from creating new blocks. The error, detected on September 29, caused users to be unable to make transactions and access their funds.

#myzilfam,

We encountered another network related issue.

We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate all feedback/reports.

We have identified the error and will fix the problem as soon as possible. Rest assured; All funds are safe! 🔒

— Zilliqa (@zilliqa) September 28, 2024

Notably, this latest setback follows another bug on September 27th, which was flagged as slowing down block production but not causing the network to come to a complete halt. Developers were able to quickly restore normal operations by deploying a fix on the same day, but the recurrence of technical problems just two days later raised concerns about the stability of the network infrastructure.

Some community members have questioned the timing of these issues, which appeared shortly after the Zilliqa 2.0 upgrade, an update aimed at improving network speed and cross-chain compatibility. However, Zilliqa clarified that these latest glitches are unrelated.

At the time of this writing, the network has not yet resumed normal operations and has not deployed the permanent fix, but block generation for validators has been restored. Meanwhile, developers assured users that all funds are safe.

Recent issues have affected the price of the blockchain’s native token, ZIL (ZIL), which has fallen by over 2.3% in the last 24 hours.

Block creation glitches have been a recurring theme for Zilliqa, and these latest glitches mirror similar issues seen last year.

In May, the network experienced a slowdown in block production, followed by a brief pause in transactions. Although the developers managed to fix the problem with the next update at that time, they admitted that the root cause of the problem could not be pinpointed.

Similarly, the network faced another outage in December 2023, with block production slowing down for almost half a day.

In related news, Ethereum layer 2 solution Starknet faced an outage earlier this year that prevented transactions from being processed on-chain. Recently, layer 1 protocol Canto also faced back-to-back outages due to issues in the consensus mechanism.