Stellar network halted for nearly two hours Wednesday when enough validator nodes stopped, preventing consensus. The incident highlighted risks of rapid decentralization, though SDF nodes remained operational.
The Stellar network experienced a major outage Wednesday afternoon, going down for nearly two hours when sufficient validator nodes stopped for various reasons, preventing the network from reaching consensus and validating transactions. SDF nodes and most validators were running, but couldn't close ledgers safely due to insufficient quorum responses. Co-founder Jed McCaleb explained that recent efforts to reduce SDF node dependency inadvertently created a scenario where the network could halt even with SDF nodes operational. CTO Nicolas Barry attributed the incident to decentralizing too quickly and noted the system behaved correctly by halting. XLM price rose 20% following the incident.