Base network says sequencer handoff failure caused 33-minute mainnet outage
Coinbase-incubated Layer 2 chain Base said a sequencer-related failure was the cause of the network's recent outage that impacted key functionalities.The Base mainnet was halted for 33 minutes at around 1:07 a.m. on Tuesday, affecting deposits, withdrawals, block production, and Flashblocks.In a postmortem published Tuesday evening, Base explained that an active sequencer, responsible for creating blocks and processing transactions, started to lag due to onchain activity.When the Conductor, an OP Stack component, tried to automatically hand off block production to a new sequencer, it failed. The new sequencer was still being provisioned and couldn't produce blocks, which led to a network stall."Typically if an unhealthy sequencer is elected, it does another handoff," Base wrote. "Since Conductor was not yet fully enabled on this sequencer, it was unable to initiate another handoff."To fix the issue, the team manually paused the Conductor and transferred block producing leadership to a new, healthy sequencer, which fully recovered the issue."We will be updating our infrastructure to ensure that when a sequencer is added to the Conductor cluster, it is always able to transfer leadership if elected," Base added.Meanwhile, the Base mainnet has been seeing a surge in activity in recent weeks, which can be partially attributed to the launch of its rebranded Base App.The Base App's relaunch last month saw the incorporation of Zora and Farcaster into the app, which established a booming decentralized social and creator economy on the network, leading to a surge in activity.Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver objective, impactful, and timely information about the crypto industry. Here are our current financial disclosures.© 2025 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.