Worrying crypto news for Polygon (MATIC): blockchain going down?

There has been troubling news concerning Polygon, whose native crypto is MATIC.

Apparently, PolygonScan data showed that the blockchain had not produced new blocks or processed transactions for some time, leading some to believe it was experiencing a disruption.

Polygon blockchain concerns: MATIC crypto affected

An outage of the PolygonScan network explorer led to unfounded speculation that Polygon’s blockchain was temporarily down.

Rumors surfaced on 22 February that Polygon, a layer-2 scaling solution, may have suffered an outage due to PolygonScan data that allegedly showed the blockchain had not processed any blocks for over an hour and a half.

The Polygon team later clarified that the problem was due to some unsynchronized nodes and that the blockchain was not interrupted:

Polygonscan is having some issues. Meanwhile, you can use this – https://t.co/Qer2ESsJoO

— Jaynti Kanani (JD) (@jdkanani) February 22, 2023

In addition, a Polygon spokesperson stated the following:

“At around 8:26 UTC, some nodes went out of sync. This caused a reaction where some nodes could not validate blocks for a very short period of time.”

Adding, then:

“The production of blocks has never stopped. However, there may have been a temporary degradation in network performance. These nodes resynchronized and systems returned to normal.” 

The spokesperson said the team is aware that PolygonScan is down, but that alternative explorers can be used.

Indeed, they were working with PolygonScan to get it back up and running.

Outages on Polygon: not the first time

Speculation about a possible outage first surfaced on 22 February, with some reporting an apparent halt in blockchain production based on data from Polyscan, which showed that the last blockchain block and transaction was processed around 8:35 PM (UTC) on 22 February.

The network has experienced outages in the past, the last of which occurred on 11 March 2022, due to necessary maintenance on one of the network’s three layers.

At that time, Polygon produced no new blocks for more than 11 hours.

In each case, the developers attributed the problem to a technical update of the network.

The developers of the Polygon network themselves informed users on the forum that there would be downtime, starting around 5:50 PM (UTC), due to necessary maintenance on one of the three layers of the network.

Specifically, a recent update was thought to have caused an error in the network’s ability to reach consensus, as follows:

“We suspect that there may have been a bug in the update that affected consensus and caused several Heimdall validators to be unable to be on the same version of the chain, thus failing to reach 2/3 consensus.”

As expected, the outage began at about 5:54 PM (UTC). The Polygon team had issued an update at 1:30 AM (UTC), explaining that they were still working to fix a bug and that in the meantime a hotfix should help generate blocks.

However, this hotfix did not seem to have achieved the desired results. The team had also assured users that all funds and data on the chain were safe.

Initially there were few complaints in the community, as this was a planned and announced outage.

However, starting in the sixth hour, some began to fear for the actual state of the network.

More bad crypto news: layoffs at Polygon (MATIC)

On 21 February, Polygon Labs, the crypto company behind the Polygon blockchain, announced that it had laid off 20% of its staff, or about 100 people. There is merit in acknowledging how much Polygon has grown exponentially in recent years.

Indeed, it now includes one of the strongest and largest ecosystems in the space, a vibrant community, and cutting-edge technology. The treasury remains healthy, with a balance of more than $250 million and over $1.9 billion in MATIC.

It has also crystallized its strategy for the next few years to help drive mass adoption of Web3 by scaling Ethereum.

However, earlier this year, it consolidated multiple business units into Polygon Labs.

As part of this process, it has shared the difficult news about reducing its team by 20%, impacting multiple teams and about 100 positions.

The decision was painful, Polygon said, but necessary to continue its journey into prosperity.

In any case, the affected employees each received three months severance pay, regardless of their level or tenure at Polygon Labs.