Base was down for almost two hours today, and the reason is the whole story: one bad block, and nobody else to keep the chain alive.
A single consensus bug sequenced one invalid block, right after block 47806542, and every block after it just stopped. Base runs a single sequencer, so when that one machine choked, the entire network choked with it. no backup producer, no other validators to route around the problem.
The exit was worse. the chain couldn't heal itself: node operators across the ecosystem had to manually restart before syncing recovered. and for those two hours there were no blocks, which means no trades, no liquidations, no withdrawals. if you wanted out, you couldn't, because leaving is also a transaction.
And this isn't the first time. a sequencer handoff failure froze Base for 33 minutes last August, today it was nearly two hours. that's the part the "L2 is a blockchain" pitch skips: a chain with one sequencer isn't decentralized infrastructure that happens to be fast, it's one server with great branding, always one bad block away from a full stop.
A single consensus bug sequenced one invalid block, right after block 47806542, and every block after it just stopped. Base runs a single sequencer, so when that one machine choked, the entire network choked with it. no backup producer, no other validators to route around the problem.
The exit was worse. the chain couldn't heal itself: node operators across the ecosystem had to manually restart before syncing recovered. and for those two hours there were no blocks, which means no trades, no liquidations, no withdrawals. if you wanted out, you couldn't, because leaving is also a transaction.
And this isn't the first time. a sequencer handoff failure froze Base for 33 minutes last August, today it was nearly two hours. that's the part the "L2 is a blockchain" pitch skips: a chain with one sequencer isn't decentralized infrastructure that happens to be fast, it's one server with great branding, always one bad block away from a full stop.
The top question in the replies: if Base runs one sequencer, what "consensus" even broke? short answer, there isn't any. wrote up how Base actually reaches agreement, why it rents its security from Ethereum but not its liveness, and why one bad block freezes everything 👇
https://x.com/zacodil/status/2070418205118492910
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