ZetaChain Outage Affects Cross-Chain Transactions as Athens Testnet Remains Down

Cross-chain data and smart contract execution Layer 1, ZetaChain, has suffered a major outage on both mainnet and testnet following a block production bug.

Cross-chain data and smart contract execution Layer 1, ZetaChain, has suffered a major outage on both mainnet and testnet following a block production bug.

The Mainnet Outage

Late on Oct. 31, the ZetaChain mainnet failed to produce blocks, rendering the network inoperable until the early hours of Nov. 1.

According to ZetaChain, the network was halted due to a consensus error following an update, namely v20.0.6.

Although it was only distributed to a “small subset of validators,” it ultimately prevented validators from agreeing on block production and resulted in a sizeable outage.

The team has switched their validators to a previous version, v20.0.5, and requested community members follow suit. By 05:52 UTC, block production had resumed, and at 06:00 UTC the team declared the issue resolved.

However, as of 06:06 UTC, there remain delays in cross-chain transactions due to the outage and transactions “catching back up.”

ZetaChain will conduct a review and publish the results in due course.

Athens Testnet Still Down

Shortly after the team had the mainnet back up and running, the Athens testnet block production also began to fail.

The team has said it is directly related to the mainnet version 20.0.6 and reiterated that validators should switch back to v20.0.05 in testnet and mainnet.

As of 07:58 UTC, the team confirmed that validators are resynching, and they anticipate normal block production will resume in the coming hours.

ZETA Price Action

Following the tech issues, the ZETA token experienced a downturn and dropped 11.42% from $0.73 to $0.64.

Interestingly, overnight, ZETA’s market cap saw a steep uptick despite the price decline. It leaped from $314 million to $354 million, yet this influx of capital seemingly had no impact on ZETA’s price.

That said, it does come amid a broader market correction in which Bitcoin (BTC) has tumbled from $72,000 to $69,300 overnight.