Base Network Blames Sequencer Handoff Failure for 33-Minute Outage—Here’s Why It Matters
Another day, another crypto infrastructure hiccup—but this one stings.
The Breakdown: Base Network's sequencer handoff process crapped out mid-transaction, leaving users staring at spinning wheels for 33 agonizing minutes. That's an eternity in blockchain time—enough for traders to miss three arbitrage windows and two margin calls.
Why It Happened: The usual suspect—a cascading failure during node synchronization. The sequencer (that overworked traffic cop processing your transactions) tripped during its baton pass to validators. Cue the downtime.
The Irony: This happened on a Layer 2 chain specifically designed to avoid Ethereum mainnet congestion. Somewhere, a Bitcoin maxi is smugly sipping coffee.
Base engineers patched the issue, but not before proving once again that in crypto, 'decentralized' sometimes just means 'fails differently.'
Centralization Concerns and Industry Response
Jesse Polak, Head of the team at Base, said that the network had a 33 minute holt and the Core team acted quickly and resolved.
. @base chain is rapidly scaling and last night we had a 33 minute halt in block production
the CORE team immediately jumped on it and resolved, then followed up with a full post mortem below today
appreciate everyone's patience as we grow this economy https://t.co/U9AU57p4Pf
Currently, Base depends on a single system, Conductor, to manage its sequencer cluster. If it fails, the whole network could pause. Although more than one sequencer runs, they all rely on Conductors to be elected and stay active.
The Base team said it will now update its infrastructure to make sure any sequencer that joins the cluster can take over leadership without delay if elected. Base currently secures around $4.1 billion in total value locked, according to DefiLlama.
Second Halt on Base Blockchain
This was Base’s second major network halt. The first happened on 5 September 2023, shortly after launch, when the network was down for 43 minutes.
Even with the recent failure, some industry members saw it as a sign of success. Former Coinbase engineer and Save Finance founder, 0xrooter, said: “People only make a fuss about downtime for chains with actual users. Bullish downtime.”
Helius Labs CEO Mert Mumtaz compared the incident to similar problems seen on Solana. Both chains are popular with users. solana is now the second-largest DeFi chain with $9.6 billion in total value locked. Base is sixth with $4.1 billion. In terms of active users, Solana has 2.83 million addresses, while Base has 1.09 million, as per DefiLlama data.
Also Read: Coinbase Plans Raising $2 Billion Through Convertible Notes
