Base: "Switching to an incorrectly configured backup sorter" caused a 33-minute interruption in block production yesterday

PANews reported on August 6th, according to Cointelegraph, that Ethereum's Layer 2 blockchain, Base, experienced an outage on Tuesday, interrupting block production for 33 minutes due to a switch to an incorrectly configured backup sorter. The incident occurred at 2:07 PM Beijing time on August 6th. The active sorter was lagging behind in block production, and Conductor, the system that manages sorter reliability, switched to another sorter. However, it selected a mainnet sorter that was still under configuration and "not yet ready," resulting in a block production interruption. The Base Build account, account X, subsequently published a post explaining the cause of the outage.

Base founder Jesse Pollak stated that the core team responded quickly, and the network was fully restored at 2:40 PM. The team also took extra time to ensure that a chain reorganization was not necessary. This incident exposed Base's reliance on centralized sorters for processing large-scale transactions, which poses a single point of failure. The Base team stated that they will update their infrastructure to ensure that all sorters in the cluster can construct blocks when selected.