Base, the Ethereum Layer 2 (L2) chain incubated at Coinbase, was unable to accept deposits or withdrawals for approximately 48 hours.
On June 25, L2 said it encountered a consensus issue that caused an invalid block sequence. The statement was submitted on 25 June, at 17:21 UTC. The issue was isolated and debugged, and the team quickly announced that a broader recovery was underway.
However, as of June 26, 10:36 UTC, the issue has not been fully resolved. In fact, the state of the chain indicated that the mainnet block product was “unhealthy.”
Aside from block production, deposits and withdrawals were also affected for the second day. It is worth noting that withdrawals only partially deteriorated, but deposits were facing a “major outage.”
For his part, Jesse Pollack, co-founder of Base, assured users that the funds were safe and that they were working on a full autopsy.
He added that stopping the chain to address the problem is not desirable and will be a challenge to do better in the future.
All funds are safe. But downtime is not okay, and we will use this to continue elevating Base as a 24/7 global finance platform. Thank you for your patience.
Base bet on markup
Separately, Pollack noted that Base will allow a DeFi-like borrowing and lending option for tokenized assets once they go live on-chain.
This is part of a broader bet on Coding While the emerging part gains traction. Unfortunately, disrupting the chain like what happened recently is not a good idea to achieve such a goal.
However, Base debuted in the second half of 2023 and has grown significantly over the past few months. It has generated cumulative revenues of over $184 million with a total value locked (TVL) of $4 billion.
Source: Devilama
Half of the $4 billion locked is on DeFi lending platform Morpho Blue. It remains to be seen whether the ongoing outage will impact investor confidence and lead to outflows.
Final summary
- The main chain faced a consensus issue that partially deteriorated withdrawals and disrupted deposits.
- Jesse Pollack, co-founder of Base, is betting big on tokenized assets with lending and borrowing options similar to DeFi.
