Ethereum Layer-2 Blast Suffers Outage as Dencun Upgrade Goes Live

Blast, a rising Ethereum layer-2 scaling network, has stopped producing blocks following the long-anticipated launch of the Dencun upgrade to the Ethereum mainnet. The Blast team tweeted at 10:41am ET that it is working on a fix.

"The Blast Mainnet has stopped producing blocks due to issues related to Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade. Core engineering contributors are working on a fix. We’ll share an update and post-mortem once the fix is live (ETA 30-60 min)."

At 11:19am ET, Blast tweeted that the issue was resolved. The network's explorer shows blocks being produced again.

Blast just launched its mainnet on February 29 following months of build-up that saw users lock up over $2.3 billion worth of crypto funds in the network's Ethereum bridge. The mainnet launch allowed users to withdraw their funds, and that $2.3 billion tally initially dipped as a result.

However, users are increasingly putting more funds into the network to take advantage of emerging DeFi protocols and potential token airdrop opportunities, with over $2.9 billion in total value locked (TVL) in the network as of this writing.

Blast hails from the team behind Blur, the leading Ethereum NFT marketplace, and has similarly used airdrop incentives to try and take market share away from rival platforms.

Dencun is an Ethereum network upgrade that's expected to make it much cheaper to use layer-2 networks, thanks to a new ability that lets the network store information for a limited amount of time, rather than indefinitely.

Editor's note: This story was updated after publication with new information.