This Ethereum Layer 2 Network Went Offline for 12 Hours

Polygon’s zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) encountered significant downtime lasting over 12 hours.

Indeed, several crypto stakeholders raised concerns about the network’s inability to produce blocks for several hours. This outage prompted comparisons with Solana, raising questions about the Polygon’s reliability and scalability.

Polygon (MATIC) Goes Offline

Polygon attributed the downtime to a glitch in the protocol sequencer triggered by a Layer 1 reorganization. In Layer 2 networks, a sequencer ensures transaction verification, organization, and compression before transmitting them to Layer 1 chains like Ethereum. The team assured users that efforts were underway to resolve the issue, promising a detailed post-mortem report soon.

Fortunately, other Polygon platforms, such as the PoS chain and the Chain Development Kit (CDK), and protocols utilizing the CDK remained unaffected. The issues have been resolved as of press time, with the network showing activity on PolygonScan.

“The zkEVM mainnet network is completed and re-indexing (internal transactions) is in progress,” an update on the zkEVM section of Polygonscan stated.

However, this incident poses significant challenges for the Layer 2 network, which has struggled since its inception last year. Emin Gün Sirer, the founder of Ava Labs, cautioned against “trash L2s,” noting the potential for fraudulent practices.

While not explicitly naming any protocol, Sirer highlighted red flags for the Layer 2 ecosystem, urging stakeholders to exercise diligence in their evaluations.

“It has become really easy to launch a trash L2, and it’s fairly easy to do that trick, perfected by a certain chain that reorgs every other day, where you find someone who is actually doing real work and you parrot what they say, while angling for a photo op with Vitalik,” Sirer remarked.

Sirer specifically warned against networks employing centralized sequencers without robust fraud prevention mechanisms. He also warned against “projects that sell tokens now to raise money to do the work that will lead to some other technology later.”

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Still, Polygon has announced plans to upgrade the zkEVM protocol in the coming weeks. The firm recognizes the need for enhancements in its current beta phase.

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Notably, these issues had little impact on Polygon’s MATIC token. The digital asset recorded a modest growth of more than 2% to trade at $0.9954 as of press time, while on-chain data reveals that Polygon retains a modest Total Value Locked (TVL) of $152 million and a transaction volume of 308,000 in the last 30 days.