The Avalanche Layer-1 network encountered a significant setback, failing to produce a block for almost two hours, as confirmed by its status page. Kevin Sekniqi, co-founder of Ava Labs, attributed the problem to a surge in inscriptions, a method for recording data on the blockchain without smart contracts, akin to minting NFTs on Bitcoin.
Avalanche’s website released a statement highlighting that developers are actively investigating a block finalization stall, which is currently preventing the acceptance of blocks on the Primary Network.
This disruption has led to a 1.5% decrease in the value of Avalanche’s native token, AVAX, since the production of the last block, as reported by TradingView.
This incident adds to the challenges faced by Layer-1 networks, with a notable example being Solana, which experienced a five-hour outage earlier in the month due to heavy network congestion.