Bug in Reth Client Disrupts Ethereum Node Synchronization

The software's share among validators is 5.4%.

On September 2nd, the Ethereum execution client Reth by Paradigm experienced a malfunction. The incident was confirmed by the company’s CTO, Georgios Konstantopoulos.

We had a bug in Reth’s state root computation today in Ethereum mainnet, which caused multiple nodes to stall.

Recover by running the following:
«`
1. reth stage drop —datadir DATADIR merkle
2. reth stage unwind —datadir DATADIR to-block 23272426
3. reth node —datadir…

— Georgios Konstantopoulos (@gakonst) September 2, 2025

The bug halted node synchronization using this software at block 2,327,426, affecting versions 1.6.0 and 1.4.8.

Konstantopoulos shared a set of commands for node recovery. However, the development team is still investigating the root cause of the issue.

Reth processes transactions and updates the blockchain state. The state root, where the error occurred, ensures data integrity—account balances and smart contract information.

The client’s share among validators is 5.4%. The leader is Geth, accounting for 48%.

Paradigm launched Reth in June 2024. The client synchronizes a full archive node storage of ~2.25 TB in approximately 50 hours, providing “excellent RPC throughput and low transaction latency.”

In late August, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposed new ways to protect the network’s decentralization.