By
Steve Muchoki
May 23rd, 2024
While Degen grapples with its recent network downtime, the platform is not the only blockchain protocol facing such challenges lately.
Degen Chain, an Ethereum-based layer 3 blockchain network, has suffered a major setback, highlighting one of the key challenges in the blockchain industry. For over 12 hours and counting, the protocol has been unable to produce blocks, halting all activities on the chain, including buying and selling cryptocurrencies.
According to the network explorer, the outage caught users off guard on Sunday evening, as the protocol abruptly ceased validating new transactions at the block height of #15524774.
Working to Restore the Network Activities
Due to the sudden downtime, many decentralized applications (dApps), including blockchain bridges operating on the Degen Chain, have become inactive. As a result, users interacting with these projects, such as DegenSwap, Mint Club, and Frogswap, have completely lost access to their assets on the platforms until the network is fully back online.
In response to the network outage, the protocol developers took to X (Twitter) on Monday morning to acknowledge the issue and reassure users of their efforts to restore the chain. According to the post, the team has partnered with the rollup infrastructure platform Conduit to bring the network back online.
Currently, the cause of the halt remains a mystery, with no clear explanation for the sudden outage. For now, the network’s issues have not spread to other chains, notably Base, which continues to function without any disruption.
Degen’s TPS Milestone
As a blockchain network, Degen was built using the Arbitrum Orbit technology stack. It primarily relies on the layer-2 scaling solution Base for operations and ensures data availability through the AnyTrust protocol.
Despite its Ethereum roots, Degen operates differently by using its native token, Degen, for gas fees instead of Ether. The digital asset follows the ERC-20 standard and was minted within the Degen channel on Farcaster back in January 2024.
Before the recent network hiccup, the protocol had quite a winning streak. In April, the Degen Chain hit a major milestone by clocking the highest Transaction Per Second (TPS) count in a single day within the Ethereum ecosystem.
According to L2BEAT, Degen’s TPS count soared by an impressive 62%, hitting 35.7, leading other projects such as Base and Arbitrum. Base only recorded 29.7 TPS, coming second on the top five list of projects in Ethereum with high throughput
That same month, Degen also emerged as the largest and most vibrant meme coin within the Farcaster network.
Not the First
While Degen grapples with its recent network downtime, the platform is not the only blockchain protocol facing such challenges lately. Solana (SOL), a prominent player in the industry, has had its fair share of network outages, with the most recent one occurring in February.
The latest downtime marked the first hiccup for the network in over a year, dashing users’ hopes that network outages were a thing of the past.
Similarly, Avalanche (AVAX), another popular blockchain, experienced a network outage in February earlier this year. The disruption lasted for several hours before the bug was identified, and activities resumed as usual.