The decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol dYdX is presently examining an unanticipated pause in block production subsequent to a planned upgrade of its chain on April 8.
Confirming the interruption on its mainnet, dYdX has acknowledged that ecosystem engineers are actively troubleshooting the problem. As per an incident report, the outage has persisted since 6:50 a.m. UTC, with a resolution not anticipated for several hours.
Major Outage Hits dYdX Chain Following Scheduled Protocol Upgrade
At 5:30 am UTC on April 8, dYdX issued a status report alerting users to an ongoing scheduled protocol upgrade and warning of potential disruptions in dYdX Chain functionalities.
Despite completing the scheduled maintenance, block production on the chain failed to resume.
As per the latest update, blockchain explorer platform Nodes Guru indicates that the dYdX mainnet has not generated any new blocks since the scheduled upgrade five hours earlier.
The investigation is ongoing, with the team indicating that a resolution may not be reached until later. dYdX mentioned convening with validators around 3 pm UTC to discuss potential solutions without risking validator penalization for being offline during the chain restart.
“The issue continues to be investigated. It’s been agreed to reconvene with the validators around 15:00 UTC. This means that the devs won’t suggest a workaround or a fix until then so that the validators won’t get jailed for not being online when the chain restarts. When a validator is ‘jailed,’ it means it’s been temporarily suspended from participating in the network activities.”
This incident marks the first major outage for the protocol since dYdX version 4 and its standalone Cosmos blockchain launched on the mainnet in October, according to its status page.
dYdX Chain Faces Setback Amid Planned Protocol Upgrade
Initially proposed on February 21, the planned protocol upgrade aimed to introduce various advancements, including order book features, risk and safety improvements, and enhancements related to Cosmos integration.
dYdX launched its dYdX Chain in October 2023, allowing DYDX token holders to transfer funds from the Ethereum network to the new platform, thus expanding its utility. DefiLlama data shows dYdX’s total value locked on-chain at $509.71 million at the time of writing, with the network generating over $48.59 million in fees over the past twelve months.
The project announced its decision to migrate from Ethereum in early 2022 due to concerns over the network’s scalability issues. The incident does not seem to have affected the price of dYdX’s token, which has risen by over 4% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap.
On April 6, the dYdX community voted to authorize the staking of $61 million in treasury tokens on the liquid staking protocol known as Stride. This move is in response to the increasing trading activity within the protocol, as highlighted by dYdX.
