Coinbase-incubated Layer 2 Base stopped producing blocks for about two hours on Thursday after an invalid block stalled its chain, before the network recovered and resumed normal operation. The halt revived questions about the centralized sequencer that orders transactions on most major rollups.
Base mainnet block production turned "unhealthy" around 12:03 p.m. ET Thursday, according to the Base status page. The team identified the trigger as a problematic block interfering with subsequent block building, then isolated a consensus fault that caused an invalid block to be sequenced and blocked new blocks after height 47,806,542. Sequencing resumed by 1:51 p.m. ET, and Base confirmed healthy block building roughly two hours after the stall began.
Base disclosed the incident on its own channel as it unfolded. "Base Mainnet is currently halted while the team works on an issue with block production," the network posted on X, adding that all funds were secure and asking users to be patient while it worked on a fix.
Ecosystem node operators had to restart their nodes to recover syncing, the status page noted. Base said its long-planned Beryl hardfork still activated as scheduled at 2:00 p.m. ET, minutes after recovery. The team said it had found the root cause and would publish a full post-mortem.
