dYdX experiences chain halt during upgrade, engineers are investigating

Published 1 minute earlier on

UPDATED: April 8, 2024, 5:43AM EDT

Quick Take

dYdX has confirmed an outage on its mainnet, with ecosystem engineers currently debugging the issue.
The outage has been ongoing since 6:50 a.m. UTC with no fix expected for several hours, according to an incident report.

The decentralized derivatives exchange protocol dYdX DYDX +4.95% has experienced a chain halt during a scheduled upgrade.

The outage has been ongoing since 6:50 a.m. UTC, according to an incident report. On-chain data shows block production appearing to stop shortly after, with dYdX engineers currently debugging the issue.

The incident represents the first major outage for the protocol since dYdX version 4 and its standalone Cosmos blockchain launched on mainnet in October, according to its status page.

The dYdX Chain was scheduled to undergo its v4.0.0 protocol upgrade today which could potentially disrupt functionalities. Scheduled maintenance was completed at 6:30 a.m. UTC. However, the chain halt issue began 20 minutes later.

In a status update at 9:21 a.m. UTC, dYdX said the issue continues to be investigated and it has been agreed for network validators to reconvene at 3 p.m. 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,” the team said. When a validator is “jailed,” it means it’s been temporarily suspended from participating in the network activities.

The incident does not appear to have impacted the price of dYdX's token, which it up over 4% during the past 24 hours, according to The Block's price page.

The dYdX team did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Block.

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About Author

James Hunt is a reporter at The Block, based in the UK. As the writer behind The Daily newsletter, James also keeps you up to speed on the latest crypto news every weekday. Prior to joining The Block in 2022, James spent four years as a freelance writer in the industry, contributing to both publications and crypto project content. James’ coverage spans everything from Bitcoin and Ethereum to Layer 2 scaling solutions, avant-garde DeFi protocols, evolving DAO governance structures, trending NFTs and memecoins, regulatory landscapes, crypto company deals and the latest market updates. You can get in touch with James on Telegram or 𝕏 via @humanjets or email him at [email protected].