Base faces 48-hour outage due to consensus issue

Base, a Coinbase-backed Ethereum Layer 2 chain, has suffered a significant disruption in block production and transactions.

The outage timeline

On June 25th, Base announced at 17:21 UTC that it had encountered a consensus issue. This caused an invalid block to be sequenced, halting deposits and withdrawals for nearly 48 hours. The team isolated and debugged the problem, initiating broader recovery. However, by June 26th at 10:36 UTC, the mainnet block product was still “unhealthy” according to the chain’s status page. Withdrawals showed partial degradation, while deposits faced a “major outage.”

Reassurance and response

Jesse Pollak, co-founder of Base, assured users that funds remained safe. He emphasized the team was preparing a full post-mortem. Pollak noted that halting the chain to fix the issue was undesirable. He said, “All funds are safe. But a halt is not okay, and we will use this to continue leveling up Base as a platform for global, 24/7 finance.” This statement reflects the chain’s ambition to provide reliable, always-on financial services.

Tokenization ambitions and impact

Separately, Pollak has signaled that Base will support DeFi-like borrowing and lending for tokenized assets once they launch. This aligns with a broader bet on tokenization, which is gaining traction. However, a chain disruption like this does not project the reliability needed for such goals. Base launched in the second half of 2023 and has grown quickly. It has cumulative revenue of over $184 million and a total value locked (TVL) of $4 billion, according to DeFiLlama. Half of that TVL sits on the lending platform Morpho Blue. It remains uncertain whether this outage will shake investor confidence and trigger capital outflows.

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