Ethereum Briefly Stopped Finalizing Transactions – What Happened?

The Ethereum blockchain suffered two brief episodes last week where blocks weren’t finalizing – an unwanted bout of instability that presents risks to the blockchain’s security but isn’t considered dire.

There was a lot of confusion in terms of what the delay in “finality” meant for the functionality of the blockchain, prompting discussions about security concerns. So it bears unpacking a bit.

The cause of the temporary loss of block finality remains under investigation, though Prysm, a provider of client software used to run a node on the blockchain, just released a new version, describing it as “the first full release following the recent mainnet issues,” with “critical fixes.”