Was The Polygon (MATIC) Network Really Offline?

Polygon’s blockchain explorer went down yesterday, Wednesday, February 22, causing a lot of buzz and numerous rumors on Crypto Twitter (CT). The PolygonScan outage caused the impression that no transactions were taking place.

Consequently, rumors spread on CT that the Polyon blockchain had gone offline. Gloating comments quickly came from the Avalanche (AVAX) and Solana (SOL) communities in particular, pointing to Polygon’s lack of reliability.

They alluded to a December 2022 tweet by Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, when he asserted that the fact that “the Solana chain is unstable” is an absolutely irrefutable truth.

However, the critics’ reaction was hasty, as Nailwal also pointed out shortly after. The co-founder clarified the situation via Twitter, writing: “It seems like PolygonScan is having some issues. You can use OKLink explorer in the meanwhile.”

The network worked almost flawlessly. Instead, it turned out to be a minor problem that affected the blockchain explorer.

What Caused Polygon’s Supposed Outage?

The problem occurred because “some nodes were out of sync,” as Polygon node infrastructure provider Rivet explained. This was due to an “unusually large” block reorganization that occurred two minutes before the nodes went out of sync.

While small block reorganizations are a common routine for Polygon and other networks based on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), the larger block reorganization triggered a cascade of issues.

It caused some nodes to fail to validate blocks for a very short period of time. Thus, the network continued to produce blocks, but was temporarily affected in network performance.

As Open Relay founder Austin Roberts stated, most providers didn’t handle the problem “gracefully.” PolygonScan required more than two hours. Rivet was back up within one hour.

Dapp developers who relied on the affected nodes struggled to get their services back online. “While I would hesitate to call it a catastrophe, it is likely more people were impacted than were talking about it,” Greg Lang of Rivet said about the incident.

The Impact On MATIC Price

The impact of the alleged outage on MATIC price was rather small. At press time, MATIC was trading at $1.382 and had even gained 2.4% in the last 24 hours.

The recent job cuts at Polygon, around 100 employees, about 20% of the workforce, had to leave the company as a result of restructuring, nevertheless put pressure on the price. After reaching a 10-month high of $1.56, MATIC is currently in a consolidation phase.

The area between $1.30 and $1.32 currently serves as the key support. During yesterday’s downturn in the overall crypto market, the 20-day EMA of MATIC at $1.32 acted as support and provided a bounce to the upside.

Featured image from GuerrillaBuzz Blockchain PR Agency / Unsplash, Chart from TradingView.com