Avalanche C-chain experiences over 4-hour blockage due to overwhelming influx of inscriptions
On February 23, Avalanche encountered a significant network outage that lasted for a minimum of four hours. This downtime was a result of developers working to implement necessary fixes.
The issue that caused the block finalization to stall on Avalanche’s C-chain was a bug related to new inscriptions introduced on the layer-1 network. Kevin Sekniqi, the co-founder of Ava Labs, clarified this matter on X. As a result, transactions on the blockchain were temporarily halted because new blocks couldn’t be added.
Avalanche operates using a tri-chain infrastructure consisting of the C-chain, X-chain, and P-chain. The C-chain serves as the foundation for decentralized finance (defi) activities, where creators deploy smart contracts. The X-chain is dedicated to asset transfers and facilitating cryptocurrency exchanges, while the P-chain focuses on securing Avalanche through the staking of AVAX, the network’s native token.
Sekniqi acknowledged that the extensive amount of code shipped on Avalanche made it possible for the inscriptions bug to go unnoticed until it impacted the mainnet. Avascan data indicated that the issue remained unresolved at the time of reporting, although developers were reportedly working on addressing it.
During the chain stall, the price of AVAX declined by over 3% and was trading at approximately $36 according to CoinMarketCap. However, this price drop may not be directly related to the C-chain downtime. Other major altcoins experienced little movement on the day, and the overall cryptocurrency market cap experienced a slight decline after reaching $2.1 trillion in the previous days.
The occurrence of inscriptions causing blockchain slowdowns was first observed on Bitcoin’s network last year. Initially, developers utilized this method to embed data on the smallest unit of Bitcoin, known as a Satoshi or SAT, as a tribute to the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. Since then, inscriptions have expanded to altcoin networks such as Avalanche, Arbitrum, Solana, and zkSync.
While some core Bitcoin developers oppose the idea of inscriptions, considering it a bug and a threat to the largest cryptocurrency blockchain valued at over $1 trillion, participants have spent over $225 million in fees to deploy more than 60 million inscriptions on-chain, as reported by a Dune Analytics dashboard.
