Polygon fixes RPC node bug, consensus returns to normal

The Polygon Foundation, the organization that oversees development of the layer-2 scaling network in the Ethereum ecosystem, said on Wednesday that consensus and finality functions have been restored, following a software bug that caused some nodes to fall out of sync with the blockchain.

Polygon successfully executed a hard fork following the software bug that disrupted some remote procedure call (RPC) nodes, which are used to relay information between applications and the blockchain layer, the Polygon team said in Wednesdays update.

Source: Polygon Foundation

The bug was caused by a “faulty” proposal from a validator, which pushed some of the Bor nodes, used for transaction ordering and block production, onto divergent network forks, according to Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal. Nailwal said:

“We rolled out fixes on both Heimdall v0.3.1 — a new version with a hard fork to delete the identified milestone — and Bor 2.2.11 beta2, purging the milestone from the database. With these fixes now live, nodes are not stuck, checkpoints and milestones are finalizing normally.”

Software bugs continue to cause blockchain outages. As cryptographic protocols become more complex by hosting smart contract functionality, file storage and cross-chain interoperability, bugs may become more frequent, disrupting the onchain user experience.

Transactions on Polyscan, the block explorer for Polygon, are displaying properly. Source: Polygon Scan

Polygon experiences second software bug since July

Wednesdays software bug did not halt block production on Polygon; instead, the issue impacted node communication, causing a discrepancy between block production and what the impacted nodes were relaying.

Polygon faced a similar issue in July when the Hemidall mainnet, the consensus client that relays communication between nodes for Polygons proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, was halted for an hour.

Like Wednesdays incident, block production on the network never ceased, and new blocks continued to be added to the chain via the Bor mainnet.

The consensus layers partial outage was due to a validator exiting the network, Polygon spokespeople told Cointelegraph at the time.

Following the unnamed validators exit, several RPC nodes had to resynchronize with the blockchain and reestablish communication to resume normal functionality on the layer-2 network.