Coinbase-backed Base halts then resumes block production

Coinbase-backed layer-2 network Base halted block production for more than two hours on Thursday before engineers isolated a consensus problem and restored normal block creation.

The outage began around noon Eastern time, shortly before a scheduled network upgrade. At about 12:20 p.m. the network posted on X that “Base Mainnet is currently halted while the team works on an issue with block production” and reassured users that “All funds are secure.”

Network logs and the status page show the issue was identified around 1:00 p.m. Eastern, when engineers found a consensus problem that had allowed an invalid block to be sequenced. That invalid block prevented new blocks from being created until the condition was isolated.

Roughly an hour after the problem was identified, sequencing of new blocks began syncing normally while the team continued to investigate the underlying cause. Engineers restarted and resynced individual Base nodes to bring apps and services back online.

The Build on Base account posted: “Blocks are being produced and we’re seeing apps and infrastructure coming back online as their Base nodes are restarted and synced. Recovery should be quick for each app/infrastructure provider once the node restarts are initiated.”

The status page notes this was the first block production and deposit issue on Base’s mainnet in the last 90 days. In May the network experienced about 30 hours of withdrawal delays.

Base is rolling out the Beryl hardfork upgrade. The upgrade will introduce a new token standard for stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets and is intended to reduce withdrawal delays on the network.

A Coinbase representative did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The network emphasized throughout the halt that user funds remained secure.

Other blockchains have faced service interruptions this year. A layer-1 network experienced multi-day outages earlier in the year related to gas and validator bugs, and another large network has recorded outages in past years, though it has not reported a mainnet problem since February 2024.

Base reported that normal block production had resumed and that engineers will continue work to determine the root cause while proceeding with the planned upgrade.