Core Ethereum developers released patches for Prysm Labs and Teku clients in response to two Beacon Chain finality issues within a 24-hour period. The Beacon Chain is the consensus layer of the Ethereum network.
On May 11, Ethereum developers reported that the Beacon Chain was experiencing problems confirming transactions. Although new blocks could be proposed, an unknown issue prevented their completion. The outage lasted about 25 minutes. A similar issue occurred on May 12, preventing blocks from completing for over an hour.
Completion could not be reached for 3 and 8 epochs, the Ethereum Foundation reported in a statement. shared by an Ethereum consultant on Twitter. The problem “seems to have been caused by a high load on some of the Consensus Layers clients, which itself was caused by an exceptional scenario.”
The beacon chain stopped finalizing about thirty minutes ago. I don’t know why yet, but in general the chain is designed to be resilient against this, transactions will continue as usual and finalization will kick in when the problem is resolved. pic.twitter.com/utAS0uAWpG
— superphiz.eth️ (@superphiz) May 11, 2023
The Beacon Chain stopped ending about thirty minutes ago. I don’t know why yet, but in general the chain is designed to be resilient to this, transactions will continue as usual, and completion will kick in when the issue is resolved.
Although the network could not be finalized, live and end users were able to transact on the network thanks to the diversity of clients “as not all client implementations were affected by this exceptional scenario.”
Client diversity refers to the number of software clients available to validators on the network. A greater diversity of clients translates into a more robust and secure network.
Both Teky and Prysm have released updates that implement optimizations to prevent beacon nodes from consuming excessive resources.
A similar issue occurred on March 15, causing a delay in the Goerli testnet version of the Ethereum “Shapella” update, which was successfully deployed on April 12. Ethereum’s pre-existing proof-of-work chain merged into the Beacon Chain on September 15, 2022, allowing the network to transition to the faster and more energy efficient proof-of-stake consensus mechanism.
The recent memecoin trading boom has increased Ethereum activity and staking reward rates. According to on-chain data, validators earned $46 million in the first week of May, or 24,997 Ether, a 40% increase from the previous week’s revenue of $33 million, when 18,339 ETH were distributed as rewards.
Clarification: The information and/or opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily represent the views or editorial line of Cointelegraph. The information presented here should not be taken as financial advice or investment recommendation. All investment and commercial movement involve risks and it is the responsibility of each person to do their due research before making an investment decision.
Investments in crypto assets are not regulated. They may not be suitable for retail investors and the entire amount invested may be lost. The services or products offered are not directed or accessible to investors in Spain.