Offchain Labs, the development team in charge of the Arbitrum Layer 2 project, has responded to recent worries regarding a reported hour-long network outage. Contrary to popular belief, the downtime was caused by a specific issue with the batch posting rather than the entire Arbitrum network, as revealed by CTO Harry Kalodner.
Offchain Labs’ Statement
CTO Harry Kalodner resorted to social media to clarify the outage event. He noted that, while the batch poster did encounter an hour of downtime, Arbitrum was not fully offline at this period. The discrepancy was underscored by Kalodner, who stated, “Was Arbitrum One down for an hour? No. Did the batch poster stop posting for an hour? Yes.”
Understanding the Problem
Users became perplexed when they detected a lack of transaction processing on the Ethereum Layer 2 network, leading them to believe there was a network-wide outage. However, Kalodner indicated that this illusion was caused by the batch poster’s brief stoppage. During such an occurrence, the sequencer continues to receive and organize transactions, but batches of transactions are not uploaded, he explained.
Kalodner went deeper into the details, discovering that the batch poster hit an unexpected problem in the geth (Go Ethereum) mempool implementation. The batch poster would reject transactions if the total cost of transactions in the mempool exceeded the sender’s balance. This prohibited the batch poster from increasing transaction costs, which is required for it to work properly.
Situational Difficulty
Kalodner acknowledged the situation’s complexities, adding that the batch poster operated in a particular setting. It uses a small portion of Ethereum’s gas limit and interacts with a separate smart contract called the gas refunded to safeguard its ETH balance.
Overview of the Incident
Arbitrum encountered a stoppage in activities between batches 316,002 and 316,003, as indicated by the blockchain tracker Arbiscan, around 22 hours before the time of this report
Conclusion
The statement provided by Offchain Labs provides insight into the recent event concerning Arbitrum’s outage. The contrast between the batch poster’s halt and a total network outage highlights the complexity of Layer 2 technologies and the issues that come with them. The tragedy serves as a reminder of the complexities required in operating a business.
