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Multiple sources have reported that the Dash blockchain came to a standstill at block height 1,874,879 following an attempted upgrade to version 19 by the developers. As of now, data indicates that the most recent block verified on the network was over 16 hours ago.
Dash Network Upgrade Fails, Resulting in Block Production Halt, Cause Is Currently Unknown
On Monday, May 22, 2023, block production came to a halt, prompting Dash Core Group CTO Samuel Westrich to take to Twitter at 1:12 a.m. Eastern (ET) to address the issue. In his tweet, Westrich revealed that the Dash Core upgrade to version 19 had encountered a snag, causing the chain to stall and block production to cease.
“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,” he wrote.
As of 4:30 p.m. (ET) on Monday, block production remains at a standstill. There are also indications that the upgrade may have caused a fork, resulting in two separate chains. For example, the blockchain explorer at dash.org reports that the last block mined was block height 1,874,879, which was mined by Viabtc. However, Blockchair’s explorer shows that block 1,874,880 was mined by Binance’s mining pool, suggesting that the chain may have bifurcated.
News of the block production glitch quickly spread across social media platforms like Twitter. Just days before on May 15, the official Dashpay Twitter account had urged all users of the Dash network to “update their software to accommodate the upcoming hard fork.” Close to five hours ago, the Dash Core developer by the name of Pasta said that the release of version 19.1.0 would address the issues at hand.
Dash is down for more than 15 hours now due to a faulty hard-forking upgrade 🤷♂️ https://t.co/56wUvwsQJn
— Nikita Zhavoronkov (@nikzh) May 22, 2023
“This release should resolve the chain stall once a sufficient number of masternodes and miners have upgraded,” Pasta wrote. “Please be aware of the known issues listed in the release announcement. A reindex may be needed.” The tweet written by Pasta was published at 1:33 p.m. ET on Monday. A Twitter user by the name of Dash Memes responded to Pasta to thank the developers for the new release.
“Thank you for hard work pushing this out. I hope serious effort is put into the post-mortem to evaluate how this came to pass and what can be done to eliminate this risk for ever happening again,” the Twitter user replied. “Dash’s reputation has been seriously damaged today, the fix needs to be structural.”
What do you think the Dash Core Group should do to prevent similar glitches and forks from happening in the future? Share your thoughts and opinions about this subject in the comments section below.