Base Network Restored After Consensus Glitch Triggers Nearly Two-Hour Block Production Halt

Coinbase-backed layer-2 blockchain Base has resumed normal operations after a consensus-related malfunction temporarily brought block production to a standstill for nearly two hours on Thursday.

The disruption began when the network encountered an issue that resulted in an invalid block being sequenced, preventing new blocks from being generated. Base’s team first flagged irregular block production on its status page at approximately 4:03 p.m. UTC, prompting an investigation into the network’s health.

By 5:21 p.m. UTC, developers identified the root of the problem as a consensus failure tied to the invalid block. The incident effectively halted the chain’s ability to process and finalize new transactions until corrective measures were implemented.

Shortly before 6:00 p.m. UTC, Base announced that healthy block production had been restored and that infrastructure providers across the ecosystem were successfully resynchronizing with the network. The team said it would conduct a full review of the incident and publish a detailed post-mortem outlining the cause and lessons learned.

Following the recovery, Base reported that blocks were once again being produced normally and that the broader ecosystem had largely returned to regular operations.

The outage marks one of the few significant interruptions for Base, currently the largest Ethereum layer-2 network by usage. According to historical network records, the platform’s previous major downtime occurred in August 2025, when services were interrupted for roughly 33 minutes.

Base creator Jesse Pollak reassured users that no funds were at risk during the outage. While emphasizing that user assets remained secure, he acknowledged that any network halt falls short of the reliability standards expected for a platform aiming to support global, always-on financial applications.

The incident occurred only hours before Base’s scheduled Beryl upgrade. Despite the temporary disruption, the upgrade was successfully completed later in the evening. Beryl introduces improvements designed to accelerate withdrawals and adds support for a new token standard tailored to real-world assets and stablecoins.

The event also highlights that network outages remain a challenge across the blockchain industry. Earlier this year, layer-1 blockchain Sui experienced two separate interruptions in consecutive days after a network update unexpectedly impacted block production, underscoring the technical complexities involved in maintaining uninterrupted decentralized infrastructure.