Zilliqa faces its third major outage in four months

Zilliqa’s repeated struggles with bugs and outages impact its future as a high-throughput blockchain?

On Jan. 16, the Zilliqa (ZIL) blockchain network—designed to improve scalability and efficiency in blockchain networks through sharding technology—resumed operations after a disruption caused by synchronization issues in its look-up nodes. These nodes, which are crucial for transaction validation and network support, fell out of sync and prevented transactions from reaching the blockchain.

During the outage, Zilliqa assured users their funds were secure and encouraged them to verify balances via the on-chain explorer ViewBlock.io. The team apologized for the inconvenience and emphasized their focus on resolving the issue quickly.

This incident is the latest in a series of technical challenges for Zilliqa. In late September 2024, the network experienced a more severe disruption when a bug halted block production entirely, leaving users unable to conduct transactions or access their funds.

Although the developers introduced what they described as a “permanent fix,” the issue followed another bug just two days earlier, which slowed block creation without fully halting it. Both incidents occurred shortly after the Zilliqa 2.0 upgrade, aimed at improving network performance and cross-chain compatibility, sparking concerns about the reliability of the network’s infrastructure.

The repeated downtime has clearly angered many in the community, with one user warning that if outages occur “before wide adoption,” potential clients might lose faith in Zilliqa’s reliability.

Meanwhile, another user lamented that these recurring problems are causing “normies to lose their excitement.

Similar disruptions have plagued Zilliqa before, including a block production slowdown in May 2024 and a December 2023 incident that temporarily halted transactions.

While developers have consistently assured users of the network’s safety and promptly restored functionality, these recurring problems point to underlying challenges in maintaining stability. At the time of writing as of Jan. 16, ZIL’s price is around $0.0225, with a market cap of $435 million.