A bug in zkSync’s software caused a security protocol to be erroneously triggered, crashing the network and leaving it offline for several hours.
Developers of the zkSync network got an unwelcomed Christmas present on Dec. 25. The network went offline, requiring the team to “inspect” it during the holiday to determine what went wrong, according to a Christmas Day announcement from the team. As per the team, zkSync was back up and running after approximately five hours.
At 7:36 am UTC, the zkSync team posted an announcement on X (formerly Twitter) stating that the network was “currently encountering network issues.” They claimed they were “actively addressing the situation” and were “committed” to getting it back online. At 10:52 am UTC, the team posted another message, stating that the issue was resolved. “[O]ne of the network’s automated safety protocols was triggered by a bug in the server,” the post stated, adding that the network was now “fully operational.” According to the message, the crash had occurred at 5:50 UTC, which implies that zkSync was down for approximately five hours.
Shutdowns and crashes affecting blockchain networks have occurred several times over the course of 2023. In January, Solana suffered a four-hour outage from a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. In March, Polygon went down for more than 11 hours because of a bug introduced during a hard fork. And on Dec. 15, a sudden burst of inscription minting caused Ethereum layer-2 Abitrum to go down for 78 minutes.