Yahya 
The Degen Chain, which is the Ethereum layer 3 blockchain, has been down for more than two days; thus, its network and applications are now useless. The blockchain failed to validate a transaction or produce a new block for more than 53 hours; the situation was alarming for its users and stakeholders.
Network Freeze Details
The last block was produced at 8:15 p.m. UTC on May 12, as per the Degen Chain block explorer. The network’s downtime was confirmed by Degen Chain on May 14 through a post on X (formerly Twitter) about the efforts made with its development partner, Conduit, to fix the issue.
The conduit analyzed the problem and discovered that it was due to a “custom config change” that affected both Degen Chain and the gaming network Apex. This transformation caused a stop in block production, and therefore nodes were forced to resync from the genesis block.
Restoration Efforts Underway
The Conservative Conduit said that they are cooperating with both the Degen Chain and the Offchain Labs in order to recover the service. “We’re working with both teams and Offchain Labs to restore service and minimize impact on users,” Conduit stated on X. The network is expected to resume functionality after the resynchronization, which is projected to be completed by 1:00 pm UTC on May 15 (6:00 am PST on May 15). This is the time for modern globalization to happen.
Impact on Applications and Token Value
DEGEN Chain, which was created for its own native memecoin DEGEN, has a wide range of decentralized applications, among which are DegenSwap, Mint Club, and Relay Bridge. At the moment, these applications are not functional because of the downtime of the blockchain. The outage has also affected the value of the DEGEN token, which is plunging to 24% from its seven-day high of $0.2.
Industry Reactions
The issue has led to debates about the factualness of layer 3 blockchains. Poly Top CEO Marc Boiron recently said that layer 3s “are just like a shark that eats another shark’s food, the Ethereum and the other layer 2s on which the layer 3s are built.” On the other hand, people like Arbitrum Foundation researcher Patrick McCorry think that layer 3 networks make transactions cheaper on layer 2 networks.
The crypto community is still waiting for the solution to this problem, and the incident goes to prove the challenges and complexities of the development and maintenance of advanced blockchain technologies.