Stellar (XLM) Blockchain Network Experiences a Brief Multi-Hour Crash of No Transactions

Stellar, the famous payment network experienced what has been described as a short crash on 15 May that lasted for 2 hours.

This could only be noticed by the validator who did not see any new transactions within the two hour period. The Head of Technology at Post Oak Labs Tim Swanson tweeted about the incidence.

“What basically happened was that a critical mass of nodes went down causing a cascading failure and so the entire network went down but because it isn’t frequently used, few noticed,” he wrote.

The chief scientist at Stellar David Mazières, confirmed the incidence and also expressed concern about the network’s failure, describing it as a weak point in the Stellar ecosystem.

“To the extent that Stellar is centralized, the question is whether the validators at the center of the network actually reflect the most important anchors and exchanges.”

Stellar is a major cryptocurrency when it comes to cross-border payments. The network was once described by Weiss Ratings as better than Ripple which also focuses on the same remittance services. Although Stellar has not been able to beat Ripple in cross-border payment, it is believed to have the potential to do so.

Other cryptocurrency projects including Ripple have been accused of being centralized, which gives the owners the ability to manipulate markets. Tron the smart contract and dapp platform has also been accused of the same thing, but no crash has been reported so far.

This should however serve as a warning to other projects especially those that have been suspected of being centralized.

The crash has been attributed to the network’s dependence on few nodes to validate transactions. A representative of Stellar Foundation earlier confirmed the crash, but network monitoring services  has also confirmed that the network is back in shape.

Price wise, the incidence has not affected XLM at all as the asset is currently the highest gainer in the last 24 hours with a gain of 16% in the last 24 hours despite the fact that altcoins have pulled back slightly except for Ethereum (ETH) which is still pushing.