Ethereum network experiences finality glitch

An unknown error in the Ethereum blockchain caused transactions to fail to finalise for a period.

According to data from Beaconcha.in, during epochs 200,552 to 200,554 there was a sharp drop in confirmed operations — down as much as 40%.

Analytical service EthereumPools wrote on Twitter that during this period “almost every pool or operator” in the network tracked by experts went offline — meaning a transaction was not confirmed correctly.

? For a couple of epochs almost every pool/operator that we monitor went offline ?

Any idea what happened? pic.twitter.com/3Q9BDFis1d

— ethereumpools.info (@EthereumPools) May 11, 2023

Finality has been restored. We do not know the root cause yet, but something happened to cause several client implementations to work really hard to keep up with the chain.

— prestonvanloon.eth (@preston_vanloon) May 11, 2023

“We do not yet know the root cause, but something happened, and several client implementations began working very hard to keep up with the chain. We are studying the current issue on the mainnet. We will publish an update as soon as we learn something new,” Lun explained.

As a reminder, after launch of the decentralized stablecoin crvUSD on the Ethereum mainnet, Curve Finance reported the need to redeploy the smart contract due to an issue with the voting token.