Ethereum Layer 2 StarkNet Rocked by 4-Hour Outage Following Major Upgrade

StarkNet's network grinds to a halt—just when Ethereum scaling needed it most.

The Breakdown

Four hours of complete downtime hit right after deploying a scheduled upgrade. Transactions froze, validators stalled, and the chain went silent. No degraded performance—just total interruption.

Behind the Blackout

Initial signs point to a consensus mechanism failure post-upgrade. Nodes lost sync, block production halted, and the usual rollup proofs stalled. Core engineers scrambled to diagnose while users faced radio silence.

Market Ripples

STRK token dipped 3% on the news—because nothing says 'store of value' like a network that vanishes for half a workday. DeFi protocols built on StarkNet saw activity freeze, with some users reporting stuck withdrawals.

Comeback Trail

The team pushed a hotfix, nodes gradually re-synced, and services restored—but confidence took a hit. Layer 2's promise of scalability means little without rock-solid reliability. Next time maybe test that upgrade beyond the devnet?

Incident timeline and status updates

Even after the team gave assurances that the pause would be brief, the network has been experiencing disruptions and delays since Grinta was deployed. According to logs from StarkNet’s status page, users reported several incidents of stutters throughout the evening of Monday and the morning of September 2.

Heads up concerning Grinta ⚠️

Grinta (aka Starknet v0.14.0) is a major milestone for Starknet’s architecture, advancing both decentralization and efficiency.

Because this upgrade drastically changes Starknet’s Core architecture (decentralized sequencer, fee market, mempool…)…

— Starknet (@Starknet) August 31, 2025

“Grinta drastically changes StarkNet’s CORE architecture,” the network’s Sunday post read, mentioning changes to the decentralized sequencer, fee market, and mempool. “During this window, transactions will not be received on Mainnet to avoid incorrect processing once the network is back to normal.”

Today, at around 2:28 AM UTC, StarkNet issued a “slow block creation alert” on its network status website, resolving it before posting another update an hour later. That block production was again taking longer than expected, and within the same timeframe, the team confirmed investigations were ongoing.

Two hours after the first alert, gateways stopped receiving transactions, triggering an “idle gateways alert.” Though resolved minutes later, the problem recurred at 5:18 and again at 5:28 AM when StarkNet confirmed that transactions were not being accepted.

The disruptions continued well into Tuesday daylight hours, with another block creation slowdown reported at 7:08 AM, followed by further issues at 7:18 AM. All incidents were marked as resolved, but the network is reportedly still under close monitoring.

StarkNet later announced the outage lasted longer than planned and said engineers were working to restore full performance. The team reiterated that service stability was a priority as the Grinta update continued to be deployed.

StarkNet launch Grinta to improve decentralization

The Grinta upgrade could push StarkNet toward decentralization, but much of the network is still under StarkWare’s centralized control. Sequencer operations, which handle the ordering of transactions, are still managed by the company.

According to StarkNet’s published roadmap, the long-term goal is to distribute block validation and production among several independent nodes. The eventual rollout of decentralized sequencing and proving mechanisms would align the protocol with public blockchain standards, where security is maintained through community-driven consensus.

Meanwhile, the outage comes just two weeks after StarkNet announced plans to integrate Bitcoin staking into its ecosystem under proposal SNIP-31. The community approved the developments with a 93.6% vote backing.

The integration will allow Wrapped Bitcoin assets such as WBTC, LBTC, tBTC, and SolvBTC to participate in the network’s staking system. The consensus model will give Bitcoin a 25% weighting in staking power, while StarkNet’s native token STRK will hold the remaining 75%.

StarkNet’s troubles arrived during a period of renewed investor interest in Ethereum, the network on which it is built. According to CoinShares’ latest Digital Asset Fund Flows Weekly Report, ethereum outpaced Bitcoin in institutional inflows during August.

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