AVAX Dips as Avalanche Network Faces Block Production Halt

The Avalanche C-Chain, home to infrastructure for most of the DeFi projects on AVAX, has gone more than three hours without producing a new block, causing a ripple of concern across the cryptocurrency community.

According to the Avalanche explorer, Avascan, the last transaction on the Avalanche C-Chain at block #42046853, was timestamped on Feb 23, 2024 11:13:25 GMT. While other subnets experienced minor delays, the main network’s sudden halt has sparked an investigation by Ava Labs, the leading force behind Avalanche.

So far, Ava Labs has said the sudden halt could be linked to a new inscription wave that was launched roughly an hour before the issues began. Kevin Sekniqi, cofounder of Ava Labs, took to Twitter to address the situation, stating: “Investigating Avalanche primary network block production issue right now.”

He later elaborated, suggesting the issue stems from “some esoteric bug from some edge case” related to mempool handling with inscriptions, hitting “some untested edge cases.”

No additional information has been shared by either Sekniqi or the Ava Labs team other than confirmation they’re still working to solve the issue.

”Developers across the community are currently investigating a stall in block finalization that is preventing blocks from being accepted on the Primary Network.” the Avalanche status site informs, “updates will be posted here as the issue is investigated.”

The technical glitch comes at a challenging time for Avalanche’s native cryptocurrency, AVAX, which has seen a continued downward trend in its market value. Marking its fifth consecutive day of losses, the token is currently undergoing a bearish correction that began on February 15. Since yesterday, AVAX has fallen by 3%, with a more significant drop of 10.5% since Monday. The current price stands at $36.41, a stark contrast to the week’s opening trading price of $40.30.

The broader market analysis of AVAX paints a picture of volatility, with the cryptocurrency trading sideways through the year. Fluctuating between a yearly low of $27 and highs of $43, Avalanche has encountered strong resistance around the $40 mark.

For swing traders, the coin still has a long-time bullish behavior, with the average price of its last 10 days being higher than that of its last 55 days. However, the gap is closing. That means there’s a risk the trend could change.