Avalanche skilled main community downtime on Feb. 23 for at the very least 4 hours as builders moved to implement fixes.
Block finalization stalled on Avalanche’s C-chain attributable to a bug with new inscriptions launched on the layer-1 community, Ava Labs co-founder Kevin Sekniqi explained on X. Transactions halted on the blockchain as new blocks couldn’t be added.
Avalanche operates utilizing a tri-chain infrastructure cut up into C-chain, X-chain, and P-chain. C-chain is the place creators deploy sensible contracts, making this the bottom layer of defi exercise.
The X-chain is devoted to transferring property and facilitating cryptocurrency exchanges, whereas the P-chain is the validator platform targeted on securing Avalanche by staking AVAX, the community’s native token.
Sekniqi famous that the sheer magnitude of shipped code on Avalanche doubtless allowed the inscriptions bug to slide by way of unnoticed until it hit the mainnet. Avascan information confirmed the problem was unresolved at press time, though builders had been reportedly addressing the issue.
Clearly, that is some esoteric bug from some edge case that needs to be dealt with rapidly. Possible some mempool dealing with situation with inscriptions that hit some untested edge circumstances.
Kevin Sekniqi, Ava Labs co-founder
Amid the stalled chain, AVAX was down over 3% and traded round $36 per CoinMarketCap, however its worth decline could also be unrelated to C-chain downtime. Different main cap altcoins additionally traded flat on the day, whereas crypto’s whole market cap skilled a slight droop after rallying to $2.1 trillion previously few days.
Inscriptions slowing down blockchains often occurred because the improvement emerged on Bitcoin’s community final yr. Initially, builders used this methodology to embed information on the smallest Bitcoin unit, a Satoshi or SAT, a nod to Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Since then, inscriptions have unfold to altcoin networks like Avalanche, Arbitrum, Solana, and zkSync.
Some core Bitcoin builders oppose the thought, tagging it as a bug and a risk to crypto’s largest blockchain, valued at over $1 trillion. However, members have spent over $225 million in charges deploying greater than 60 million inscriptions on-chain, per a Dune Analytics dashboard.
