Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 network, Base, experienced a temporary halt in block production on Tuesday, August 5, following a faulty switch to a backup sequencer that was not properly configured to process transactions. The outage, which lasted 33 minutes, raised concerns over the network’s centralized sequencer management system.
The disruption began at 6:07 am UTC when the main sequencer started lagging behind in block generation. Base’s internal management system, Conductor, initiated an automatic failover to a backup sequencer. However, the selected backup was still undergoing setup and could not handle the transaction load, leading to a full pause in block production.
Last night, Base Chain experienced a 33 minute network disruption that halted block production.
This was due to an automatic handoff to an unhealthy mainnet sequencer in the high-availability cluster. We quickly switched to a healthy mainnet sequencer and Base Chain resumed…
— Base Build (@buildonbase) August 5, 2025
Base Build confirmed the incident via its official X account, and Jesse Pollak, the network’s creator, stated that the team acted swiftly to resolve the issue. Full functionality was restored by 6:40 am UTC. A brief delay followed to confirm that no chain reorganization was required.
This marks the second major outage for Base since its public debut. The first occurred on September 5, 2023, when the network was offline for 43 minutes due to similar block production issues.
In response, Base engineers announced plans to upgrade infrastructure to ensure that all sequencers in the cluster are capable of taking over block-building duties if selected.
Despite the setback, some crypto community members remained optimistic. “People only make a fuss about downtime for chains with actual users,” said 0xrooter, a former Coinbase engineer and founder of Save Finance. He labelled the event as “bullish downtime.”
According to DefiLlama, Solana and Base are among the most active chains by user addresses, with 2.83 million and 1.09 million, respectively. Solana ranks second in total DeFi value locked (TVL) at $9.6 billion, while Base holds sixth place with over $4.1 billion.
Base’s head of engineering, known as “aflock” on X, emphasized the importance of uptime, adding that it can’t “power a global economy without a solid backbone of a network.” He praised the team’s quick response and affirmed that improvements are underway to strengthen the network’s resilience.
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