Coinbase's Base Resolves Block Production Outage

By: Eva Baxter

Coinbase's Ethereum Layer 2 network, Base, recently experienced a brief service disruption that temporarily halted its block production. The outage occurred on August 5 and lasted approximately 33 minutes. This incident marked the second interruption for Base, following a similar disruption in September 2023, which lasted over 40 minutes. The network disruption began around 06:07 UTC and was triggered by a switch to a backup sequencer that was not fully prepared to handle transactions. Consequently, this led to a halt in block production until the issues were resolved and normal operations resumed.

The Base team has since addressed the situation, ensuring that all sequencers are adequately prepared to handle transactions in the future. According to Base’s status page, the development team confirmed that the issue was resolved about 30 minutes after the initial halt, and they assured users that no funds were compromised during the incident.

In the wake of the outage, the Base network has continued to make significant advancements. The introduction of the Base App has greatly contributed to integrated decentralized social and creator economy features, driving a new wave of token launches. This surge of activity has enabled Base to surpass other platforms such as Solana in the daily creation of new tokens. Additionally, features like Base Account and Base Pay have enhanced user experience by simplifying identity and payment solutions, drawing attention to Base’s growing prominence in the crypto space.

Despite these challenges, Base has maintained its position as one of the leading Ethereum Layer 2 networks in terms of daily transaction volumes, surpassing competitors including Arbitrum and Optimism. According to L2Beat, Base is currently the second-largest Ethereum Layer 2 network with over $13 billion in total value locked, showcasing its significant impact on blockchain scalability solutions.