Coinbase’s Layer-2 (L2) system known as Base, built atop Ethereum (ETH), encountered a downtime lasting 20 minutes on September 21. This outage, similar to incidents on Solana, was quietly labeled as “degraded performance” once resolved. Jesse Pollak, Base’s creator and a key developer at Coinbase, acknowledged this as the network’s second outage, with a previous disruption in early September. Despite the severity of the issue, the community and media paid little attention to it.
Concerns were raised within the crypto sphere regarding the lack of coverage and communication surrounding Base’s outage, contrasting with the extensive reporting seen during Solana’s network issues. Notably, Coinbase’s network uptime data did not categorize the recent downtime as a block stall or network failure. Observers like Slorg noted the disparities in how Solana’s outages are extensively covered compared to Base’s incidents, emphasizing the need for clearer communication from Coinbase.
As the market digested the outage, Coinbase stock traded positively on NASDAQ, showing resilience despite Base’s temporary disruption. The impact on related cryptocurrencies was noted, though Base’s lack of a native token cushioned some financial blows. Despite the centralized nature of Base around Coinbase, the incident underscored the importance of reliability in decentralized applications on Ethereum. Nonetheless, commendations were given to the team for swiftly addressing and resolving the technical issue.