The Avalanche C-Chain, home to infrastructure for most of the DeFi projects on AVAX, has suffered a major outage for more than five hours as of this writing, causing a ripple of concern across the cryptocurrency community.
Avalanche's main chain went a few hours without producing new blocks, though Ava Labs co-founder Kevin Sekniqi tweeted at 11:25am ET that the chain "seems to be now moving," but that he was "still observing."
The Avalanche blockchain's status page now reports, "Block finalization on the Primary Network is beginning to resume. Stability will fluctuate as validators continue updating."
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Earlier, Ava Labs said the sudden halt could be linked to a new inscription wave that was launched roughly an hour before the issues began. Sekniqi previously wrote that he believed the issue stemmed from "some esoteric bug from some edge case" related to mempool handling with inscriptions, hitting "some untested edge cases."
Obviously this is some esoteric bug from some edge case which should be handled quickly.
Likely some mempool handling issue with inscriptions that hit some untested edge cases.
— Kevin Sekniqi 🔺 (@kevinsekniqi) February 23, 2024
No additional information has been shared by either Sekniqi or the Ava Labs team other than confirmation they’re still working to solve the issue.
”Developers across the community are currently investigating a stall in block finalization that is preventing blocks from being accepted on the Primary Network.” the Avalanche status site informs, “updates will be posted here as the issue is investigated.”
The technical glitch comes at a challenging time for Avalanche's native cryptocurrency, AVAX, which has seen a continued downward trend in its market value. Marking its fifth consecutive day of losses, the token is currently undergoing a bearish correction that began on February 15. Since yesterday, AVAX has fallen by 3%, with a more significant drop of 10.5% since Monday. The current price stands at $36.41, a stark contrast to the week's opening trading price of $40.30.
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The broader market analysis of AVAX paints a picture of volatility, with the cryptocurrency trading sideways through the year. Fluctuating between a yearly low of $27 and highs of $43, Avalanche has encountered strong resistance around the $40 mark.
For swing traders, the coin still has a long-time bullish behavior, with the average price of its last 10 days being higher than that of its last 55 days. However, the gap is closing. That means there’s a risk the trend could change.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.
Editor's note: This story was updated after publication to note the latest comments from Sekniqi and details from the Avalanche status page.
