• Avalanche’s explorer showed that block production was halted for over two hours on 23 March.
• Despite the halt, the transactions metric looked normal, and AVAX was not impacted.

There were indications of a shutdown in the Avalanche [AVAX] blockchain on 23 March, raising concerns about the feasibility of the network’s transactions and the value of AVAX.

Read Avalanche’s [AVAX] Price Prediction 2023-24

Avalanche C-chain sees a pause in block production

Decentralized apps (dApps) and smart contracts are catered for on the Avalanche network by the Avalanche C-Chain, commonly called the Contract Chain. It belongs to the Avalanche network, which promises to offer a highly scalable and functional blockchain ecosystem. 

On 23 March, for reasons not made public, this portion of the blockchain network stopped functioning, per data obtained from the snowtrace.io explorer. At block height 27788298, the Avalanche C-chain ceased producing blocks, and the outage continued for over two hours. As of this writing, the production of blocks had resumed, so everything appeared to have returned to normal.

A deeper dive into the Avalanche network status

The Avalanche C-chain’s block production halt prompted an examination of the network’s uptime during the previous 90 days, which showed that it had been relatively stable. Except for the mainnet explorer and the mainnet bridge, the Avax status check showed that all network platforms had 100% uptime for the past 90 days.

In the last 90 days, the mainnet explorer has been down for three days, as revealed by a status check. Service was interrupted for over an hour on 20 March, for 24 hours on 21 March, and over 15 hours on 22 March. Then, on 22 and 23 March, the mainnet bridge was down for six and two hours, respectively.

Due to the interruptions, the Explorer and the Bridge were only available 99.43% and 99.88% of the time, respectively, within the specified time frame.

Impact of the downtime

The daily transactions chart for the C-chain showed that the halt did not affect the volume of transactions. At the time of this writing, the total number of blocks was 41,705, and the total number of transactions was 156,044. 

How much are 1,10,100 AVAXs worth today?

Additionally, the daily active address and average block time charts on the Avalanche C-chain also remained unchanged.

AVAX on a daily timeframe

Nonetheless, the outage did not bother AVAX. The token’s value rose by 3%, trading at $17.30 on a daily timeframe as of this writing. To continue in a bull trend, it has also maintained above-neutral status on the Relative Strength Index (RSI).

• As per recent data, Solana’s downtime woes may not be as bad as they seem.
• Daily active users and fees continued to decline as SOL suffered.

In the past 12 months, Solana [SOL] has faced significant scrutiny from the cryptocurrency community, largely due to issues with downtimes on its network. However, if recent data is to be believed, some of the negative attention may not be entirely warranted.

Is your portfolio green? Check out the Solana Profit Calculator

Fall down seven times, get up eight

According to Messari, Solana has improved its technology and updated its network every time it has faced downtime issues.

2/ @solana has presented solutions to its downtime issues via QUIC, QoS, priority fees/ local fee markets, and client diversity, updating frequently.

The same grace afforded to systems like AWS and chains like ETH during times of high traffic should be afforded to Solana. pic.twitter.com/OnFY4dxiiK

— Messari (@MessariCrypto) March 22, 2023

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Even though there have been improvements to its technology, many remain skeptical about Solana’s DeFi growth, citing its declining TVL as an indicator of the network’s declining health. However, it was important to note that a lot of the activity on the Solana network has been because of derivatives, NFTs, and de-pin networks, which do not contribute to Solana’s TVL.

Messari analysts further speculated that if Solana turns on network incentives, its TVL could be on par with other L2 chains. At press time, the TVL of Solana was $277.37 million, after falling by 2.43% in the last 24 hours.

3/ Comparing @solana’s TVL to other emerging chains doesn’t tell the full story.

Usage has been driven by non-TVL dominant use cases like derivatives, NFTs, & DePIN networks.

If Solana decides to turn on incentives, we could quickly see volume approach parity with the top L2s. pic.twitter.com/uwkxuEdZk8

— Messari (@MessariCrypto) March 22, 2023

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DeFi’ng the odds

Although Solana’s TVL has continued to decline, the overall volume of AMM’s (Automated Market Makers) has increased. AMMs are decentralized exchange mechanisms that use mathematical algorithms to set asset prices based on supply and demand, allowing anyone to buy and sell assets without a traditional order book or centralized exchange.

The sudden increase in the trading activity of these AMMs may show a favorable development for Solana within the realm of DeFi.

Solana developers have also been working on other updates to improve the state of Solana’s DeFi.

Realistic or not, here’s SOL market cap in BTC’s terms

However, despite the efforts shown by these developers, the number of active users on the Solana network has declined by 17.5% over the last 30 days. Due to this, the revenue generated by the network also fell by 8.2% in the same period, according to Token Terminal’s data.

SOL sees red

SOL has been under pressure recently due to a drop in its prices over the last few days, which coincided with a decline in its trading volume and an increase in volatility. This heightened volatility could make cautious investors hesitant to purchase SOL in the future.

• Man suspected to be Do Kwon arrested at the Podgorica airport with fake documents
• The location of the Terra founder has been unknown since September 2022

Update:

Korean authorities have confirmed that the man arrested by Montenegro authorities was Do Kwon. The confirmation was made after verifying the age, photo, nationality, and name via ID cards. The South Korean authorities are now waiting to confirm fingerprint information.

Authorities in Montenegro – a Balkan country – have arrested a man who could potentially be Terra’s founder – Do Kwon. The news was announced by the interior minister of Montenegro – Filip Adzic – on his social media channel. In a translated Tweet, the minister stated that one of the world’s most wanted fugitives was arrested in Podgorica.

The Tweet further stated that the police has detained a man suspected to be the head of Terraform Labs. Additionally, the minister stated that Do Kwon was captured at the Podgorica airport with fake documents. The authorities are currently verifying the identity of the detained man.

Do Kwon wanted by multiple jurisdictions

Do Kwon is wanted by authorities in South Korea, Singapore, and the USA. Recently, the US Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) filed a fraud case against the Terra creator, claiming that his scheme resulted in the loss of 40 billion of market value. The commission also alleged that LUNA and UST were securities, which meant that Do Kwon committed securities law violations by offering them for sale without registration.

Kwon has been on the run ever since the de-pegging of algo-stablecoin resulted in the death spiral of LUNA. At the time of the crash, the Terra founder was believed to have been in Singapore. But, his whereabouts were unknown soon after South Korean authorities started investigating the collapse of Terra’s tokens and issued an arrest warrant.

Read Price Prediction for LUNA 2023-24

The Singapore police had declared that he had eloped from the country in September 2022. And, Interpol had issued a red notice for the creator of LUNA as per the request of South Korean authorities. In response to reports of him being on the run, Do Kwon stated,

“I am not “on the run” or anything similar – for any government agency that has shown interest to communicate, we are in full cooperation and we don’t have anything to hide”

The news of the possible arrest has had the price of LUNA tumbling in the market. According to CoinMarketCap, LUNA – the new token launched after the death spiral – registered a downfall of over 6 percent in the past hour, at press time. The coin was trading at a spot value of $1.30, with a market cap of $311 million. Meanwhile, the old Terra LUNA – now dubbed LUNC – did not show a massive shift in its price on the news. The coin was trading at $0.000123, with a slump of over 2% in the past hour.