Ethereum experienced a second finalization delay on May 12, the developers said.
Terence.eth (@terencechain) wrote about Twitter:
“Mainnet is not finalizing again. Prysm is releasing a patch today. Will keep you posted!”
Subsequent comments from Terence.eth indicate that these deals have since been finalized and that other customers are also releasing fixes. However, he said Ethereum is “not out of the woods”, implying that the issue has not been fully resolved.
This represents the second deadline for finality in 24 hours. Ethereum also did not finalize transactions for 25 minutes on May 11 for reasons that were unclear at the time.
The cause of the problem is now partially identified. Terence.eth says that Ethereum nodes running the Prysm client received troublesome attestations that led the client to use increased CPU and memory, resulting in a “death spiral”. He said most of the clients except the Lighthouse client are prone to similar issues.
Terence.eth also said that Prysm nodes have found a “subtle bug” that occurs when clients enter the “death spiral”. This doesn’t seem to be the ultimate cause of the problem.
Superphiz, who commented on yesterday’s delay, says that he expects a third incident to occur. He urged node operators to upgrade their hardware and switch to a minority customer.
Neither incident involved a total Ethereum outage. The blockchain continued to partially process transactions, which were then properly finalized.
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