Arbitrum blames hour-long outage on ‘surge in network traffic’

Arbitrum stopped processing transactions Friday, leaving users of the Ethereum layer 2 stuck in limbo.

According to a post from Arbitrum’s X account, the blockchain stalled at 3:29 pm London time “during a significant surge in network traffic.”

Arbitrum blamed the issue on the blockchain’s sequencer — software that bundles Arbitrum transactions and sends them to the main Ethereum network for validation.

“We are working to resolve [this] as quickly as possible and will provide a post-mortem as soon as possible,” the post said.

The issue with Arbitrum’s sequencer caused gas fees on the main Ethereum network to spike.

Data from Ethereum blockchain explorer Etherscan shows fees hovering around 150 gwei — about three times the network’s seven-day average. At current transaction costs, users must pay upwards of $100 in fees to trade tokens on decentralised exchanges.

The Arbitrum sequencer inbox currently accounts for over 20% of all gas spending on Ethereum, which is far above the usual amount.

According to hildobby, a pseudonymous researcher at crypto investment firm Dragonfly Capital, over 90% of the transactions sent on Arbitrum before it halted were inscriptions — a new way to create NFT-like assets popularised on Bitcoin.

This is not the first time Arbitrum’s sequencer has encountered issues.

In June, Arbitrum’s sequencer went offline for over an hour, preventing users from making transactions.

At the time, Patrick McCorry, a developer at the Arbitrum Foundation, told DL News that the issue was caused by a bug that occurred on the sequencer that led to its batches reverting on-chain.

The incident once again highlights how networks like Arbitrum, which inherit the security and decentralisation of the Ethereum network, also rely on centralised points of control. Offchain Labs, the company behind the Arbitrum blockchain, has previously said it intends to decentralise Arbitrum’s sequencer in the future.

The price of Arbitrum’s governance token, ARB, fell 4.1% over the past 24 hours.

This is a developing story.

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.