Avalanche (AVAX), the up-and-coming competitor to Ethereum (ETH), recently experienced a brief network outage during a software upgrade.
The X-chain, which is used to transfer funds, was significantly slowed down and processed only a few transactions, rendering it virtually unusable. At the same time, block production stopped on the C-chain, which is used for smart contracts.
As a result of the outage, several crypto exchanges, including South Korea-based UpBit, temporarily halted AVAX transactions. UpBit released a statement announcing that they would be suspending AVAX deposit and withdrawal services due to a system check on the AvaX wallet. The exchange assured customers that they would resume deposits and withdrawals once the inspection was completed and that they would provide updates on the resumption of services through official channels.
AVAX co-founder Kevin Sekniqi has since revealed that the outage was caused by a bug with version 1.9.12. He explained that the network had been unstable for a little over an hour, but that the problem had been fixed with the rollout of another upgrade. Sekniqi urged Avalanche validators to upgrade to version 1.9.14 as soon as possible to ensure network stability.
Despite the brief network outage, the AVAX team was able to resolve the issue quickly, and the network has since stabilized.