Polygon, the Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution, has announced that its zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) is currently experiencing downtime due to an issue with its blockchain sequencer.
In a statement on their platform, Polygon assured their two million followers that the issue is limited to the zkEVM and does not affect any other chains deployed using the Polygon chain development kit (CDK).
Polygon explained that the problem lies with the blockchain sequencer, which is responsible for organizing and combining transactions into batches before relaying them to the Polygon zkEVM smart contract on Ethereum’s main network.
The platform emphasized that they are actively working on resolving the issue and promised to provide a comprehensive “post-mortem” statement once the matter is resolved.
Polygon’s announcement about the zkEVM downtime was posted on their platform, X.
Several X users have been speculating about the lack of discussion within the crypto community regarding the unexpected and prolonged network downtime.
One X user, 0xngmi, asked their 101,900 followers, “why is nobody talking about how Polygon zkevm has been down for 10h and is still down?”
Another user, Mirza.inj, highlighted to their 14,800 followers why “Polygon zkEVM was down for over 10 hours, and no one said anything.”
This incident comes just a month after the Solana network experienced a major outage. On February 6, it was reported that block production on the Solana network came to a halt for over five hours before validators were able to restart the network. Since January 2022, Solana has experienced several significant outages.
In March 2023, Polygon launched the zkEVM to its mainnet beta, aiming to enable developers to deploy smart contracts with increased finality and lower costs. It was reported that the zkEVM mimics the transaction execution environment of Ethereum’s mainnet.
Polygon claims that the open-source zkEVM allows decentralized applications to scale through transaction batching, unlocking higher performance.
Sandeep Nailwal, a key figure at Polygon, shared his thoughts in an interview titled “Slumdog billionaire 2: ‘Top 10… brings no satisfaction’ says Polygon’s Sandeep Nailwal.”