Zilliqa on-chain transactions plunge amid ‘technical issue’

Update December 18, 2023 10:09PM UTC: The Zilliqa mainnet has been restored and is now fully operational. 

The $383-million Zilliqa ecosystem is experiencing disruptions due to a “critical situation” impacting the network.

According to a Dec. 18 post by developers, the Zilliqa blockchain faces a “technical issue that has resulted in an interruption to block production.” Blockchain data shows that daily transactions on Zilliqa subsequently plunged by roughly 50% to 30,906, compared to an average of 61,000 in the past few days.

Activity has since paused, with the last transaction occurring at around 11 am UTC, with no new blocks being produced since then. “The team are working hard to recover the network,” wrote Matt Dyer, Zilliqa’s CEO, in a follow-up.

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“This unexpected challenge is our top priority and our technical team is working to identify and resolve the problem,” said developers, warning that all partners should “temporarily halt any deposits or withdrawals on the network” as the issue is being resolved.

However, developers emphasized that “funds are SAFU,” and users can still check their on-chain wallet balance using the Zilliqa block explorer after reports surfaced of users unable to see token balances within their Zilliqa wallet.

“No action is required on users’ ends. Just wait for the network to be restored, and things will be back to normal,” said a community moderator on Zilliqa’s official Discord.

Dear community, We are writing to inform you of a critical situation currently impacting the Zilliqa blockchain network.

The network is presently experiencing a technical issue that has resulted in an interruption to block production. This unexpected challenge is our top…

— Zilliqa (@zilliqa) December 18, 2023

Founded in 2017 in Southeast Asia, Zilliqa launched its mainnet the following year and is dedicated to blockchain scalability and a metaverse venture. The network has processed 61.4 million transactions since its inception. Even before the current network outage, however, Zilliqa’s blockchain saw relatively few transactions per second regarding utilization rate.