CARPE CONSENSUS: Did Centralization Cause the Base Blockchain Outage?
CoinDesk Podcast Network
CoinDesk
4.8 • 689 Ratings
🗓️ 8 September 2023
⏱️ 23 minutes
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Summary
While one network (Base) faced an outage, another (Ethereum) had a layer 2 leader grappling with the idea of an “Ethereum Supreme Court.”
On “Carpe Consensus,” host Danny Nelson is joined by CoinDesk tech reporter Sam Kessler to dive into the latest blockchain news.
- [0:53] Coinbase’s Ethereum layer 2 blockchain Base experienced its first major outage since its launch, halting the production of new blocks for about 45 minutes. Sam explains what caused the outage and other vulnerabilities he’s watching.
- [13:16] In crypto, the phrase “code is law” seems to assert that technology can thwart centralized individuals. But a proposal for an “Ethereum Supreme Court” gets Danny and Sam thinking – are blockchains already just social contracts, not straight code as we’ve been led to believe?
“Carpe Consensus” is executive produced by Jared Schwartz and produced and edited by Eleanor Pahl.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Carpe Consensus. |
| 0:09.0 | Join hosts Ben Schiller and Danny Nelson as they seize the world of crypto. |
| 0:29.0 | Welcome to Carpet Consensus. I'm your host, Danny Nelson, the only surviving host after the apocalypse that is layoffs and or holiday breaks. This week, we are joined by Sam Kessler, another |
| 0:36.4 | wonderful reporter here at Coin Desk, which is, of course, the network that brings you all these wonderful Coin Desk podcasts. Sam, welcome to the show. |
| 0:45.4 | Hey, Danny. |
| 0:46.1 | Happy to be here. |
| 0:47.0 | Awesome. |
| 0:47.4 | And just a listener note, Ben will at some point in the future return. |
| 0:52.0 | But not this week. |
| 0:53.0 | This week, we're going to be talking about |
| 0:55.7 | outages. Outages, outages, outages, outages. The latest outage in crypto world is on the biggest |
| 1:01.7 | blockchain, or rather not the biggest blockchain, but the most notable one of late. That's Coinbase's |
| 1:07.3 | base. Earlier this week, I think it was on Tuesday, the base chain stopped producing |
| 1:13.0 | blocks, which is a wonky way of saying that it stopped working, because if you don't produce |
| 1:17.1 | blocks and you're a blockchain, you're not adding anything to the chain. And if you're not |
| 1:20.8 | adding anything to the chain, nothing's happening. So, Sam, do we have any idea why nothing was |
| 1:26.0 | happening on the base chain? |
| 1:30.2 | So they say they being Coinbase. |
| 1:31.2 | It's a little bit confusing. |
| 1:33.6 | Coinbase, the company created base, the blockchain. |
| 1:39.0 | And there's always these divisions that they try to do to make it clear that the blockchain is not the company. |
| 1:45.9 | But anyway, in this case, they said that they had a delay in block production due in part to our internal infrastructure requiring a refresh. Then they said the issue was identified and remediated, and they did |
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