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Blast Blockchain Locks Up Amid Ethereum's Dencun Upgrade
Its mainnet stopped producing blocks around the time of the Ethereum overhaul.
Updated Mar 13, 2024, 4:45 p.m. Published Mar 13, 2024, 2:59 p.m.
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Blast, the recently launched layer-2 blockchain, froze up for about an hour Wednesday amid Ethereum's major Dencun upgrade.
Blast, which is built atop Ethereum and therefore intrinsically linked to it, posted on X that its mainnet "has stopped producing blocks due to issues related to Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade."
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Blocks stopped being produced at 14:05 UTC, correlating with the time the Dencun upgrade took place, according to the Blast block explorer. At 15:09 UTC, Blast announced that the mainnet was back online.
The Blast Mainnet has stopped producing blocks due to issues related to Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade.
— Blast (@Blast_L2) March 13, 2024
Core engineering contributors are working on a fix. We’ll share an update and post-mortem once the fix is live (eta 30-60 min).
Amid the snafu, Blast competitor Arbitrum announced that it will take 24 hours to integrate elements of the Dencun upgrade, which will ultimately prompt a reduction in Ethereum fees.
The Blast mainnet went live on Feb. 29 after attracting $2.3 billion worth of deposits following its announcement in November.
The network's largest protocol, Orbit Finance, experienced a 32% rise in total value locked (TVL) to $431 million over the past 24 hours. The rise couldn't deter a plunge in the value of Orbit's native token, which is down by more than 20% today after being issued on March 8.
CORRECTION (March 13, 2024, 15:01 UTC): Fixes the spelling of Dencun in the headline.
UPDATE (March 13, 2024, 15:14 UTC): Adds context throughout.
UPDATE (March 13, 2024, 15:32 UTC): Adds that Blast is back online.
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