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Tanzeel Akhtar
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Base, the Ethereum Layer-2 network backed by Coinbase, has restored overall network stability following intermittent transaction inclusion delays and elevated transaction drops that affected users at the end of January.
The incident began on January 31, when Base experienced periods of increased congestion that resulted in submitted transactions being delayed or in some cases dropped.
Base developers said blocks continued to be produced throughout the disruption but users saw higher-than-usual latency for transaction confirmation.
In an update posted by the Base team the network confirms that the issue stemmed from an infrastructure configuration change related to transaction propagation.
Propagation Change Triggered Execution Failures
According to Base, a configuration adjustment caused the block builder to repeatedly fetch transactions that could not be executed due to rapidly rising base fees.
As a result transactions were reprocessed inefficiently, leading to elevated drops and delays in transaction inclusion during peak congestion.
“On Jan 31, Base experienced elevated transaction drops and inclusion delays,” the team said, adding that the propagation change created a feedback loop in the transaction pipeline under volatile fee conditions.
Base later confirms that the issue was mitigated by rolling back the configuration change, restoring normal transaction processing.
Fix Validated, Postmortem Planned
Base said it has validated that the rollback successfully restored overall network stability. The team also announced plans to conduct a full root cause analysis (RCA) and publish a public postmortem in the coming days.
“We have validated the fix restored overall network stability,” Base wrote, noting that intermittent congestion may still occasionally result in delays, but longer-term improvements are underway.
The incident highlights the operational challenges Layer-2 networks face as activity scales rapidly, particularly during periods of heightened demand and fee volatility.
Pipeline Optimization and Monitoring Improvements
To prevent similar disruptions from recurring, Base said it is taking several steps to strengthen its transaction handling infrastructure.
Planned upgrades include optimizing the transaction pipeline by removing unnecessary peer-to-peer overhead, as well as tuning mempool queue behavior to improve transaction inclusion under stress.
Base expects this work to take approximately one month. The team said it is improving alerting systems and change monitoring processes during future infrastructure rollouts, aiming to detect transaction propagation issues earlier and respond more quickly.
Status Page Updates for Users
Base encouraged users and developers to follow updates through its official status page to stay informed of future incidents or network performance issues.
As Layer-2 adoption continues the network’s ability to maintain reliability during congestion events will remain a key focus for both users and institutional builders deploying applications on Base.
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