The Zilliqa blockchain network experienced a temporary disruption on Tuesday, December 19, 2023, due to a technical issue that caused some transactions to fail or be rolled back. The team behind Zilliqa assured the community that the issue was resolved and that they were working on a compensation plan for the affected users.
According to a blog post by the Zilliqa team, the network faced a consensus failure after upgrading to version 8.1.0, which introduced a new feature called state delta pruning. This feature was meant to reduce the storage requirements of the network by deleting old state data that was no longer needed.
However, due to a bug in the code, the state delta pruning feature deleted some state data that was still needed by the network, resulting in a state mismatch between the nodes. This caused the network to stall and stop producing new blocks.
The team decided to roll back the network to block number 1,394,088, which was the last block before the upgrade. This meant that all the transactions that were processed after the upgrade were cancelled and had to be replayed.
How did Zilliqa fix the issue?
The team worked on replaying the rolled back transactions using the transaction data that was available to the nodes. There were a total of 4,478 transactions out of which 1,230 transactions were to smart contracts like staking, ZILSwap, token transfers etc., and the remaining 3,248 were simple ZIL transfers, many of which were mining payouts.
However, not all transactions could be replayed successfully, as some of them failed due to various reasons, such as slippage, expiration, or insufficient funds. The team said that they would cover the gas fees for the failed transactions and top up any shortfalls for the users who had sent ZIL transactions.
The team also said that they would compensate the miners who had lost their mining rewards due to the roll back. They said that they would distribute 10 million ZIL from their treasury to the miners who had mined blocks between block number 1,394,089 and 1,395,000. The distribution would be proportional to the number of blocks mined by each miner.
What is the impact of the issue on Zilliqa?
The technical issue had a negative impact on the Zilliqa network, as it caused a drop in the on-chain transactions and the network activity. According to Cointelegraph
The issue also affected the price of ZIL, the native token of Zilliqa. According to CoinMarketCap, ZIL fell by more than 10% on December 19, reaching a low of $0.07. The market capitalization of ZIL also decreased by more than $100 million, falling below $900 million.
The issue also damaged the reputation of Zilliqa, as some users and investors expressed their dissatisfaction and frustration with the network disruption and the roll back. Some users also reported that they had lost their funds or their rewards due to the issue. Some users also questioned the security and the reliability of Zilliqa, as they wondered if such issues could happen again in the future.
What is the outlook for Zilliqa?
Despite the technical issue, the Zilliqa team said that they were confident that the network was stable and secure after the roll back and the replaying of the transactions. They said that they had fixed the bug that caused the issue and that they had tested the network extensively before resuming the normal operations.
The team also said that they were committed to improving the network and the user experience, and that they were grateful for the support and the patience of the community. They said that they would learn from the issue and that they would implement better processes and practices to prevent such issues from happening again.
The team also said that they were excited about the future of Zilliqa, as they had many plans and projects in the pipeline. They said that they would continue to innovate and deliver on their vision of building a scalable, secure, and decentralized blockchain platform that supports smart contracts, decentralized applications, and decentralized finance.
