Summary of the Astar zkEVM Incident -#63 Astar Weekly Journal-

This newsletter will be distributed weekly based on the concept of “an easy weekend recap” of the happenings at Astar Network.

In this week’s issue, we’ve compiled a chronological summary of the Astar zkEVM incident. As there is confusion due to information coming from various sources, we hope this helps you understand what happened and when. Here is the summary.

April 6

・Issues occurred, such as transactions not processing smoothly and minted NFTs not appearing on the NFT marketplace.
・Initially, it was analyzed that the increase in transactions due to the implementation of the Yoki Origins leaderboard caused RPC issues.

April 7

・The core team announced that an upgrade to Astar zkEVM would take place on April 10.

April 8

・The network issues that began on April 6 continued unresolved.

April 9

・Separate from the announced upgrade, emergency maintenance was conducted.
・The maintenance was completed, but it was announced that the network remained unstable due to RPC synchronization issues.

April 10

・A report on the series of incidents was posted in the Forum.
The contents are as follows.

- On April 6, Astar zkEVM detected synchronization issues due to a reorganization (reorg) of Ethereum L1.
- In response to the issue, the planned upgrade for April 10 was carried out ahead of schedule.
- The network is now operating properly.
- However, due to the reorg, some transactions and actions on Astar zkEVM from April 6 to 8 might have been canceled.
- Transactions on the official bridge between Ethereum L1 and Astar zkEVM are being processed correctly, but withdrawals on Ethereum are delayed because proofs have not yet been submitted.
- Third-party bridges (LayerZero, Layerswap, Relay Link) may be affected by the reorg and are currently under investigation. Updates will be announced as they become available.

・It has been determined that the incident was caused by Polygon’s tech stack. Once Polygon’s response is complete, Astar will update its side. Further responses and analysis of the cause will be announced later.

April 12

・Waiting for an announcement from the core team.

-The issue on the Polygon side has been resolved, and the network is operating normally.
-Addresses affected by Riog will be disclosed in the coming days.
-Asset protection is guaranteed (there will be no loss of assets).
-A detailed report will be released later by Polygon.
-The resumption of Yoki Origins is undecided (a schedule will be announced soon).

Reflections

The cause of this incident lies in Polygon’s tech stack. Therefore, it took time for Astar to pursue the cause because communication with Polygon was necessary, delaying announcements and responses.

Also, since ‘Discord’ and ‘Forum’ were frequently used for announcements, users collecting information on platform X had the impression that there were hardly any announcements from the core team. As a community member, I think there is a need to improve communication in this area.

Moreover, for those somewhat familiar with crypto, this incident might seem like “well, these things happen,” but for users who fully trust the Astar brand, it would be incredibly frustrating. Reflecting on this, it seems that the road to mass adoption of blockchain and crypto is still long. For many, having a full trust point is essential, and when issues arise, it shouldn’t just be a matter of “personal responsibility”; there must be a point where responsibility can be attributed to someone. This incident has given me a lot to think about.

That’s all for this week’s news.

Thank you for reading to the end.