Celo blockchain suffers a critical network outage

The Celo blockchain is facing downtime after the production of new blocks on the network stopped all of a sudden. The network came to a halt at block #14,035,19 at 06:20 p.m. ET on Wednesday. Meanwhile, all of the various applications on the chain remain unusable.

According to its official block explorer, Celo's proof-of-stake network could not validate new transactions for over nine hours until block production was restored for a few minutes at 3:39 a.m. ET on Thursday. However, the chain froze again at block #14,035,044.

Celo's most recent update stated that the network's validators had been working on a fix to bring the network online. The team has not yet provided a reason for the outage.

"Validators are working to identify and resolve the issue. All funds are safe. Updates will be provided as soon as possible," the team wrote on Twitter.

Even though this was the first network downtime for Celo, the core team has previously grappled with technical issues related to its bridge. In November 2021, Optics — Celo's bridge with Ethereum and Polygon — suffered from a critical security bug, requiring an emergency upgrade.

Celo is an Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible blockchain that raised $25 million from venture firms, including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Polychain Capital in April 2019. As of today, Celo hosts Ethereum-based decentralized exchanges like Uniswap and Sushiswap. It is also home to its native apps like Valora, Mento, Moola Market, UbeSwap, and Mobius Money.