The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) has confirmed that the Stellar blockchain is currently experiencing partial downtime.
At the time of writing, the network has been offline for over four hours, prompting exchanges to pause deposits and withdrawals for native currency, XLM. Stellar’s public network last suffered an outage in May 2019, with the network maintaining a 100% uptime record since then.
According to an update on Stellar’s Status page, the current downtime is linked to validators suddenly dropping off from the network. Within less than two hours, the team updated that it had identified the potential root cause of the problem and is working to restore services.
Notably, the outage affects the Stellar Public Network, SDF Public Network validators, and the SDF Public Network Horizon. SDF engineers are working first to restore the SDF horizon endpoint but are yet to provide an estimated time to get the entire network fully operational.
As one would expect, Stellar’s downtime has forced cryptocurrency exchanges to disable deposits and withdrawals. Coinbase is reportedly investigating the situation, while Bitstamp announced on Twitter that it has disabled the functions and will restore them as soon as things are back to normal.
Stellar (XLM) Defies Outage Issues to Record Double-Digit Gains
At the time of writing, the price of Stellar’s native token, XLM, has not reacted negatively to news of its underlying network going offline for close to a quarter of the day. Instead, the coin has gained 12% in the last 24 hours, en-route to breaking its previous yearly high.
XLM currently trades at $0.5469 with a $12.4 billion cap. Worth noting is that the latest rally coincides with a remarkable turn in fortune for Ripple’s XRP token. XRP hit the $1 mark earlier today, regaining its position as the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap.
On the other hand, XLM lurks just outside the top ten, with investors hoping that the network’s issues will be resolved before it creates panic and a potential market sell-off.
