Samuel Westrich, the CTO of the entity behind privacy-focused blockchain Dash, disclosed in a May 21 tweet that the chain stalled and was failing to produce blocks after encountering a problem during the v19 activation.
There was a problem during v19 activation of Dash Core. The chain is stalled and currently not producing blocks. We have everyone investigating the issue. I will continue with updates on Twitter as we have more information.
— Samuel Westrich (@SamWestrich) May 22, 2023
A few hours later, developers said they had identified a few issues and were in the process of working on a fix.
“We are balancing the desire to fix these issues and the need to continue block formation. It is important to realize that blocks and transactions on the Dash network that are not ChainLocked and not InstantSend locked should not be assumed to have true finality,” said Dash developer “Pasta” on Twitter.
ChainLock keeps the Dash network secure against 51% attacks, while the InstantSend feature facilitates instant payments.
Around 13 hours after the chain stopped producing blocks, developers released a patch that they said should resolve the chain stall after enough master nodes and miners have upgraded. The temporary release will delay the original v19 upgrade until June 14.
According to developers on a Dash subreddit forum, the issues appear to have caused the blockchain to split into two separate versions. Reddit user “xkcdmpx” said that around 10% of the network has moved forward on a fork, but the majority will see this chain as invalid.
Delaying the original hard fork will give developers more time to fix the underlying issue and identify the reason behind the chain halt.
Binance announced that it would temporarily suspend distributing DASH mining rewards until block production is back on its normal course. At the time of writing, a Dash blockchain explorer indicated that the network had not produced new blocks for 20 hours and 33 minutes.
