Starknet Mainnet Experiences Halt Again: New Outage Freezes Ethereum Layer-2 for Over 2 Hours

Starknet, a layer-2 solution for Ethereum using zero-knowledge rollups, faced another outage on Monday, which paused its operations for more than two hours. This incident raises further concerns about the network’s stability.

Key Takeaways

Starknet experienced a mainnet outage that lasted over two hours.
Despite impressive metrics, the downtime disrupted all on-chain activities and transactions.
The outage follows a challenging year for Starknet, marked by significant interruptions.
Current market reaction has been calm, with the STRK token seeing minor fluctuations.

On Monday, Starknet, a layer-2 system for Ethereum that relies on zero-knowledge rollups, faced another major outage, shutting down network operations for more than two hours. This incident brings into question the reliability of Starknet as it progresses into 2026.

Developers shared details about the outage via a post on X, indicating that engineers were looking into the problem. However, the specific cause of the disruption was not immediately disclosed. At the time of the first update, block production had been stalled for just over two hours, preventing users from submitting or completing transactions.

Starknet Mainnet Experiences Halt Again: New Outage Freezes Ethereum Layer-2 for Over 2 Hours

Starknet’s Impressive Metrics vs. the Halt

Data from Starknet’s block explorer revealed that the network had successfully processed over 264 million transactions since its inception and maintained more than 56,000 active accounts, with average transaction fees remaining under one cent.

Starknet Transactions

Total value locked in Starknet was approximately $840 million. Nonetheless, the outage effectively halted all activities across decentralized applications, wallets, and smart contracts during the downtime.

Later updates indicated that block production had resumed, with new blocks being generated just minutes after the incident was publicly acknowledged.

Starknet Resumption

Starknet is designed to batch transactions off-chain while submitting cryptographic proofs to Ethereum, thereby enhancing scalability for decentralized finance, gaming, and other smart contract applications, all while utilizing Ethereum for security and finality.

Additionally, the network aims to serve as a bridge for Bitcoin-related decentralized finance, promoting what it has termed BTCFi within the Ethereum ecosystem. Unfortunately, the recent outage has temporarily disrupted these plans, leaving developers and users awaiting the restoration of normal operations.

Starknet’s Ongoing Network Challenges

This latest outage comes on the heels of a tumultuous year for Starknet. Back in September 2025, the network faced a more severe event following the deployment of a significant upgrade known as Grinta, version 0.14.0. This upgrade, aimed at enhancing decentralization through the introduction of multiple sequencers, resulted in a prolonged halt in block production that lasted for roughly nine hours.

During that incident, Starknet experienced two chain reorganizations, which rolled back nearly an hour's worth of transactions and required users to resubmit their actions.

A post-mortem released after the September outage identified several contributing factors to the failure. Different sequencers were found to be operating with inconsistent views of Ethereum due to issues with RPC providers, affecting block proposals. A separate software bug in the component that updates Starknet’s state further complicated matters when handling reverted transactions, ultimately leading the team to take manual action to halt the chain and maintain its accuracy.

Earlier, in April 2024, Starknet experienced a four-hour outage caused by a rounding error that prompted block reorganizations, temporarily filling transaction capacity before developers managed to clear the backlog and restore normal service.

Though the recent halt was shorter and less impactful than the incident in September, it adds to an ongoing pattern of interruptions as Starknet moves toward a more decentralized infrastructure.

Typically, such outages lead to delayed or failed transactions, temporary inaccessibility of user funds and services, and disruption for applications operating on the network. In the past, some centralized exchanges have opted to temporarily suspend deposits and withdrawals of the STRK token as a precaution, although trading often continues internally.

Market reactions to the latest outage were relatively subdued. The STRK token was trading around $0.089, reflecting a 1.3% increase over the previous 24 hours, with daily trading volume rising more than 38% to approximately $63.7 million.

STRK Trading

Despite this, the token remains significantly below its peak in early 2024, which was above $4, largely due to broader market conditions and ongoing concerns regarding supply and network reliability, rather than a singular event.