Dash, a blockchain fueling its eponymous privacy-focused coin, experienced a stall in processing transactions and producing new blocks early Monday morning, as reported by Samuel Westrich, CTO of Dash Core Group. According to Westrich, a problematic v19 activation grounded block production to a halt. Amidst the chaos, the Dash Core team has been working diligently to investigate the issue and implement a fix.
Several hours after the incident, Dash Core developer Pasta mentioned that two options were being investigated to resolve the problem swiftly. However, the latest Dash Core client update, v19, might be postponed until the issues get sorted. Until then, transactions on the Dash blockchain will not be considered final, with exceptions made for ChainLocked and InstantSend locked transactions specific to Dash.
Some members of the Dash community posit that the planned v19 update did not go smoothly, citing the developers launching a hard fork that introduced a new type of node. This reportedly caused a rift, resulting in the blockchain splitting into two chains running in parallel. The confusion within the community has led to complaints about excessive subreddit moderation on Dash’s official forum.
The Dash network update, announced on April 14th, encompassed significant modifications in the functions of nodes and wallets. Requiring a hard fork to be implemented by most nodes, this update has led to a parallel split in the transaction history. Intended to introduce a new version of Dash masternodes, the v19 update aims for higher collateral and more authority on the blockchain.
With a current market cap of $493 million, ranked 85th in size on CoinMarketCap, Dash has not enjoyed as much popularity as Ethereum. However, the update might bring several improvements in anonymity features, nodes, wallets, and other aspects of the blockchain’s operation. One key feature is that “stuck” transactions in the queue would be re-sent sooner than the current 24-hour delay.
In the meantime, the crypto exchange Binance announced that it would suspend the distribution of mining rewards for DASH in its mining pool until the blockchain resumes block production.
While the Dash Core team continues to work on resolving the issues, it remains crucial for the crypto community to be diligent in ensuring that the technology evolves in a safe and reliable manner for all users involved.
Source: Coindesk
