Ethereum Temporarily Split after Bug Fix

On Nov 11, the Ethereum network temporarily screeched to a halt, forking after developers fixed a two-year-old bug. Most Geth clients with old but stable versions were affected. Heavily disrupted was Infura, an Ethereum hosted node that powers the MetaMask browser wallet. Binance and Bithumb, in light of the glitch, halted withdrawals of ETH and ERC-20 tokens as price feeds were also affected.

Details: 

Yesterday’s temporary split has been described as “serious” and on the same scale as the disastrous DAO hack. And it couldn’t come at a worse time. The Ethereum network is preparing to transit to a Proof-of-Stake network. Similar glitches on a PoS platform could have been worse. Although Ethereum developers added some few code changes to the source, hugely impacted were nodes running on the Geth clients that hadn’t been updated. Infura highlighted just how fragile blockchain systems, despite their robustness can be. For this reason and the actions taken by Binance and Bithumb, Paolo Ardoino, the CTO of Bitfinex said exchanges should run their own Ethereum nodes and not rely on intermediaries like Infura to access the base layer.

Impact on the ETH Price: 

Prices are steady despite the minor split. Following stealth changes by the Ethereum Foundation to fix a dormant bug and the swift action by affected entities, the impact wasn’t as severe. Still, these are flashes of weakness once again reiterating the need of individuals and companies to run their independent nodes and not depend on the middle man.

More market updates on our Blog