Canto blockchain struggles to restart following outage

Canto, a layer-1 general-purpose blockchain network, has been struggling to restart block production since Aug. 11.

The network halted its block production at block 10847516 per data from Canto Explorer. Subsequently, in an Aug. 12 X post, the project said it was experiencing an “issue with consensus,” adding that an upgrade to fix the issue would be implemented.

A consensus mechanism is a process used in blockchain networks to validate the authenticity of transactions. It ensures that all network participants have a consistent and accurate record of the blockchain’s data, preventing fraud and double-spending.

Canto hasn’t revealed the exact details of what caused the outage but has reassured users that all funds were safe and would be accessible once block production resumes.

The outage happened just a day after the project was set to implement the Callisto upgrade at 14:30 UTC on Aug. 9. The upgrade is expected to improve the block production times and was the first official upgrade in a series of updates set to enhance the network’s efficiency.

As of now, it is not known whether the upgrade was fully implemented or if it contributed to the current outage.

On Aug. 13, Canto briefly resumed block production on Aug. 12 before stopping again at block height 10,848,199. This time, the project cited “unforeseen secondary effects” as the culprit, noting that validators in its network had “halted the network after upgrading to v8.”

Canto’s development team, B-harvest, is reportedly working on v8.1.0 of its validator protocol, a critical component that dictates how validators operate. It is estimated that block production will resume by the end of the day.

Launched in August 2022, Canto managed to surpass $200 million in total value locked in March 2023. Since then, the project’s TVL has dropped to $14.58 million per DefiLlama data.

Despite the back-to-back outage, the price of CANTO, the network’s native token, was up 38.2% over the past day and over 43% in the past week.

Canto is not the only network to have experienced an outage this month. Last week, Ethereum layer 2 solution Starknet halted block production for the first time since launch. The outage was caused by a rounding error bug that led to a reorganization of blocks, creating a backlog of transactions.

Earlier this year, Solana, which has long been plagued by outages, went down for about five hours on Feb. 6.