Base Details Cause of Delayed Transactions on Mainnet

• Base restored network stability after rolling back a configuration change that caused transaction delays.
• The incident did not halt block production, confirming degraded performance rather than a full outage.
• Base plans a public postmortem and month-long infrastructure upgrades to reduce future disruptions.

Base network stability has been restored after a configuration issue led to transaction delays and dropped transactions on the Ethereum layer-2 network at the end of January. The incident caused higher-than-usual latency for transaction inclusion, although block production continued and the network remained operational throughout the disruption.

According to Base, the issue first emerged on Jan. 31, when users reported intermittent delays and missing transactions on mainnet. Despite these conditions, Base said blocks continued to be produced, indicating the problem did not escalate into a full network outage.

Configuration Error Triggered Delays

Base explained that the disruption stemmed from a configuration change affecting transaction propagation. As base fees rose, the block builder repeatedly fetched transactions that could not be executed under current fee conditions. This behavior led to higher transaction drops and slower inclusion times for users submitting transactions during the affected period.

The team responded by rolling back the configuration change. Base said it validated that the fix restored overall network stability. In follow-up updates, the network operator confirmed that transaction processing had returned to normal conditions after the rollback.

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Network Remained Operational

During the incident, Base stated that the network continued to function at a core level. Blocks were still produced, and transactions continued to be processed, albeit with delays. This distinction highlighted that the event involved degraded performance rather than a complete halt of network activity.

In a post published on Feb. 1, Base reiterated that the fix had addressed the immediate cause of the disruption. However, it also noted that periods of increased congestion can still occasionally lead to delayed or dropped transactions under the current system behavior.

Planned Improvements to Support Base Network Stability

Looking ahead, Base said it is preparing a full root cause analysis, which will be shared publicly in a postmortem in the coming days. The team also outlined a series of infrastructure improvements aimed at strengthening the Base network stability and reducing the likelihood of similar incidents.

Planned changes include streamlining the transaction pipeline, removing unnecessary peer-to-peer overhead, and tuning mempool queue behavior to better manage pending transactions. Base also plans to enhance alerting systems and monitoring during infrastructure rollouts. The company expects this work to take approximately one month to complete.

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