Canto Consensus Issue Finally Resolved After 33 Hour Delay

The Cosmos-based layer-1 blockchain Canto has announced plans for an upgrade on August 12th to resolve a 33-hour outage, which they attribute to a consensus issue. Launched in August 2022, Canto positions itself as a permissionless, general-purpose blockchain suited for decentralized finance (DeFi) applications and compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).

Damage Control

The Canto blockchain has been inactive for over a day, with the last recorded transaction, block 10847516, occurring on August 11th. According to CantoScan, no new transactions have occurred in the last 33 hours, and only two transactions have been recorded in the past 46 hours.

Canto representatives posted an update on August 12th via their official X account where they confirmed a temporary halt in the chain did indeed occur due to the issue with consensus. The team stated that an upgrade to address the problem is scheduled for 12:00 PM UTC on August 12th. The consensus mechanism is responsible for validating and authenticating transactions on the blockchain.

No Cause For Concern

Originally, the Callisto upgrade was scheduled for August 9th at 14:30 PM UTC. Canto has not clarified whether this upgrade was completed or if it might be related to the current outage. Despite the disruption, Canto reassures users that there is no cause for concern. They expect normal operations to resume once the consensus issue is resolved. All funds are secure, and when the chain is back online, users will have access to all functionalities as usual, stated Canto.

Canto had previously announced plans to transition to the Ethereum Network as a layer-2 solution in September 2023. However, this decision was reversed in March 2024, and Canto remains a layer-1 blockchain. According to DefiLlama, while blockchain activity peaked in February 2023, it has since declined, placing it as the 80th largest blockchain by total value locked.