Analyst: Base may experience network downtime due to invalid blocks, and the single sequencer model poses centralization risks

Odaily Planet Daily News: On-chain analyst Vadim pointed out that Base experienced a consensus vulnerability today, causing a single invalid block. Block generation stopped entirely after block height 47806542, leading to a network outage of nearly two hours. Since Base adopts a single sequencer architecture, when this node fails, the entire network halts. There are no backup block producers or other validation nodes that can bypass the failure to maintain on-chain activity. During this outage, users were unable to perform transactions, liquidations, or withdrawals.

Furthermore, the network recovery process was not automated. Node operators within the ecosystem had to manually restart before block synchronization gradually resumed. This is not the first time Base has encountered a similar issue. In August last year, Base also experienced a network freeze for approximately 33 minutes due to a sequencer switching failure. The single sequencer model exposes the centralization risks of some current L2 networks: while it offers higher speed, when the core component fails, the entire chain can halt due to a single point of failure.