Dash blockchain resumes operation after a technical glitch

What’s new? On May 23, the network of the anonymous cryptocurrency Dash resumed block mining after a technical glitch during the activation of the Dash Core v19 upgrade. Dash Core Group CTO Samuel Westrich said on his Twitter account that thanks to the rapid response of node operators, the blockchain is working and stable again. As of May 26, 08:10 UTC, the Dash hashrate is 3,385 PH/s and the block height is 1 876 832.

We are approaching 80% of network updated to v19.1.0. Chain locks are forming again. Thanks to the quick response by Masternode Owners the Dash network is fixed and stable again. — Samuel Westrich (@SamWestrich) May 23, 2023

What else is known about the situation? The upgrade, which includes a number of tweaks to fix bugs and is mandatory for all nodes, was activated on May 22. The migration process was not expected to take more than 30 minutes, but as a result of the failure, the production of new blocks stopped. On the same day, the developers unveiled an operational fix for Dash Core 19.1.0. The release of this version postpones the main hard fork to June 14.

After the May 23 resumption, Twitter user Steve Sokolowski said that the technical glitch was actually a rollback of the blockchain, which resulted in “costing Prohashing’s miners huge amounts of lost money.” He stressed that Dash is not immutable like Bitcoin, noting that he “will be reviewing whether to continue using or mining Dash in any way.”

@Dash_Community rolled back their blockchain unilaterally, costing @ProHashing's miners huge amounts of lost money.Dash is not an "immutable" chain like #btc. I will be reviewing whether to continue using or mining Dash in any way. — Steve Sokolowski (@SteveSokolowsk2) May 23, 2023

Representatives from the Dash community responded by saying that there was no blockchain rollback and no transactions were lost. “All that happened was the tx’s were delayed being added to the blockchain and the v19 hardfork was postponed,” they explained. Community representatives also allowed the possibility that Prohashing pool members were processing transactions in an outdated network chain after the failure.

In the blockchain, as a result of a failure at a certain height, several blocks can be released at once, each of which is further supported by subsequent blocks as they are mined, thus creating conflicting chains. The longest chain is retained as the main chain, and the blocks not included in it become obsolete. This sort of thing happened on the bitcoin network on May 8.

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Westrich also commented on the user’s statement, explaining that blockchain rollback occurs when there is consensus on mined blocks, noting that in this case there was none.

In addition, the Dash network is expected to see its next halving on June 23, which will halve the reward to miners per mined block from 2,4873 to 1,2437 DASH.

On May 11, Ethereum experienced an unknown glitch that caused the network to fail to confirm transactions for about 25 minutes. Transactions were processed, while remaining incomplete and at risk of change.