Infura, which provides the infrastructure behind the Ethereum blockchain, is recovering from a widespread service outage affecting its main network API. The issue has forced popular crypto exchanges such as Binance to introduce temporary bans on withdrawing Ether (ETH) and other Ethereum-enabled tokens, though normal Binance service has since resumed. First revealed via the Infura status page at 03:00 ET / 08:00GMT, the outage also affected the functionality of the Ethereum MetaMask wallet and could still affect decentralized finance (DeFi). “We are currently experiencing a service outage for our Ethereum Mainnet API. Our on-call team is studying and working to restore the functionality of the service,” the company wrote.
Ethereum glitch
Infura offers companies a simple way to deploy decentralized applications (Dapps) on the Ethereum network. The service, which manages nodes on behalf of its clients, is also the lens through which companies access blockchain data. A useful way to think of Infura is as “the AWS of the Ethereum ecosystem,” as Raúl Marcos, founder of cryptography consulting firm Carbono, put it. According to some parties, the Infura outage may have been caused by an unexpected split on the Ethereum blockchain — essentially, an unplanned fork — caused by changes the developers could have made months ago. If this is the case, third-party services running on the Ethereum blockchain will need to implement the necessary updates before full service resumes. Although Infura's Ethereum mainnet API is not yet at full capacity, the company claims to have "identified the root cause" and "is preparing a fix to restore service functionality." “We apologize to our users for the prolonged interruption of service. We are still working on the solution to ensure its accuracy and completeness. The root cause was attributed to various components of our infrastructure being blocked in an older stable version of the go-ethereum client,” Infura explained. The firm has promised to share "a full autopsy" once the issue is resolved; TechRadar Pro will update this article with the latest. Via Decrypt