The Internet of Things (IoT) blockchain Helium shut down for about 4 hours on July 11 on account of validator outages from a software program replace, inflicting delayed transaction finality.
During the outage, units transferring knowledge over the network weren’t affected, however miner rewards and token transfers have been left pending. The team resolved the problem by skipping the blockchain ahead by one block and resuming regular capabilities.
At 10:20 am EDT, the Consensus Group stopped producing blocks at block peak 1435692 on the Helium (HNT) blockchain, in keeping with a standing replace. Lacking network consensus, token transfers couldn’t be accomplished, and new blocks weren’t being produced.
We’re again people. The chain simply processed block 1,435,693. We’ll proceed to observe the chain all through the day.
— Helium (@helium) July 11, 2022
Helium is an IoT network that makes use of bodily radio hotspots to permit customers to connect with their units from wherever there may be radio protection. On the Helium network, a Consensus Group consists of 43 validator nodes randomly chosen in mounted intervals to supply network consensus.
In the postmortem for the occasion, Helium engineers cited two causes validators stopped creating consensus on the network.
First, a difficulty with a July 8 software program replace for validators contributed to the issue. The v1.12.3 replace was designed to supply help for the 5G Mobile subnetwork and its MOBILE token.
Additionally, a “local network outage” was additionally accountable. In the mission’s Discord channel, Helium moderator “Digerati” defined {that a} excessive focus of validators randomly chosen because the Consensus Group on the time of the outage was operating on the identical Amazon Web Service (AWS) network, which skilled technical difficulties.
AWS is a world cloud computing and knowledge storage service that can be utilized to reinforce pc networks like Helium.
A Helium neighborhood moderator explains an AWS outage affected validators.
Compounding the issue was the failure of an auto-skip function that ought to have chosen a brand new Consensus Group mechanically. The team said that “a known issue prevented the auto-skip feature from working as expected.” However, it isn’t clear what the “known issue” is that the team referred to.
Although the network couldn’t select a unique Consensus Group, it was designed with the flexibility to skip the blockchain a block ahead “to mitigate situations such as these,” in keeping with a ten:56 am ET announcement from the team.
Related: Cloudflare outage impacts a number of crypto exchanges
By 1:45 pm ET, new block manufacturing began with block quantity 1435693. The team stated it labored intently with validator operators to make sure they have been synced accurately and launched a brand new software program replace.
HNT is down 4.1% over the previous 24 hours, buying and selling at $8.76 in keeping with CoinGecko. It is down 84% from its November 2021 all-time excessive.
