- dYdX Chain halted block production following a scheduled network upgrade
- The team is investigating the issue and will reconvene with validators at 3pm UTC
- The upgrade aimed to add risk and safety improvements as well as order book features to the chain
The decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol dYdX recently experienced an issue during a scheduled network upgrade for its blockchain that caused block production to halt. This highlights the risks involved when making major changes to blockchain networks.
The Scheduled Network Upgrade
On April 8th, dYdX announced it would be proceeding with a scheduled protocol upgrade that could disrupt the functionality of the dYdX Chain. The upgrade included advancements like order book features, risk and safety improvements, and Cosmos-related enhancements.
However, after the scheduled maintenance period when the upgrade was set to occur, the chain did not resume block production. The latest blocks produced on the dYdX mainnet were from the time of the scheduled upgrade five hours prior.
Investigating The Issue
dYdX confirmed the chain encountered an unexpected issue during the upgrade. The team said they were debugging it but the root cause was still being investigated. They agreed to reconvene with validators later to suggest a workaround or fix so validators would not get penalized for downtime.
Impact On dYdX
This outage came right after the dYdX community approved staking 20 million tokens on the liquid staking protocol Stride. dYdX noted this move follows tremendous growth in trading activity on the protocol.
The dYdX Chain also suffered a targeted attack in November 2022 leading to $9 million in losses. Improvements were made to enhance monitoring and alerts after that incident.
Conclusion
While disruptions from major network upgrades are not uncommon in crypto, this event underscores the importance of proper testing and coordination between developers and validators when making significant blockchain changes. dYdX appears committed to finding a solution and preventing validator penalties as it investigates the issue further.
