Dash Blockchain Experiences Prolonged Downtime Following Failed Hard Fork; Developers Plan Second Upgrade Attempt on June 14th

The Dash Blockchain Faces Issues During Hard Fork Activation

On the morning of May 21, chief technical officer Samuel Westrich announced via a tweet that the Dash blockchain had stalled during the activation of its Dash Core v19 hard fork. Approximately 13 hours later, developers introduced a v19.1.0 fix to address the problem.

Importance of ChainLock and InstantSend Features

While the chain was down, Dash developers issued a warning stating that blocks and transactions on the Dash network lacking ChainLock and InstantSend locks should not be considered as having true finality. ChainLock and InstantSend are security features unique to Dash.

Binance Temporarily Suspends Dash Mining Rewards Distribution

During the blockchain’s downtime, Binance, a prominent cryptocurrency exchange, temporarily suspended the distribution of Dash mining rewards.

Upgrade Intended to Enhance Security and Performance

The Dash Core v19 hard fork, announced on April 10, aimed to improve security through BLS signatures and implement high-performance master node features and wallet improvements. These updates were in preparation for the release of Dash Platform to the mainnet.

Upcoming Upgrades and Known Issues

The v19.1.0 release, which will address bugs, is scheduled to be deployed soon. However, the release of v19.0.0 has been delayed until June 14. The developers assure users that once a sufficient number of masternodes and miners have upgraded to the new version, the chain stall issue should be resolved. Users are advised to review the release announcement for any known issues and consider the possibility of a reindex.

Current Status of the Dash Blockchain

At the time of writing, the Dash blockchain explorer indicated that the last Dash block was processed approximately 16 hours ago.

Previous Updates and Chain Halt

The v18 update of Dash was implemented around September 13, 2022, and underwent further upgrades in January after an attempted hack that caused some master nodes to go offline. The chain halt was triggered by the release and subsequent withdrawal of Dash Core v18.2.0.

Dash Core: The Network behind the Privacy Coin

Dash Core is the network on which the privacy coin Dash (DASH) operates. Dash originated from Litecoin (LTC) in 2014. It’s worth noting that the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) classified Dash as a security in its April complaint against Bittrex.