Terra blockchain resumes operation with staking disabled after earlier halt

Quick Take

  • Terraform Labs has said the Terra blockchain had been halted.
  • The Terra blockchain has resumed operating, blockchain explorer shows.
  • The earlier move was due to concerns that the network could be attacked for a relatively low cost.

UPDATE 2 (2:05 p.m. ET): Terra devs have announced that block production on the network has resumed with staking disabled.

"Delegations are disabled now that the chain is live with the new code merge," the devs said.

A block explorer maintained by Terraform Labs shows the new blocks featuring transactions as of less than a minute before press time.

The headline of this report has been updated to reflect the new information.


UPDATE (1:15 p.m. ET): Terra devs said in a tweet that they have released a patch on Github ahead of a planned blockchain restart.

"Delegations will be disabled once block production resumes. The network should go live once 2/3 of the voting power comes online. An update will be provided accordingly."

Devs had said earlier that network validators were "applying a patch to disable further delegations, and they will coordinate to restart the network in a few minutes." 


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The Terra blockchain has been halted to protect against a possible attack, according to a statement by Terraform Labs.

"Terra validators have decided to halt the Terra chain to prevent governance attacks following severe $LUNA inflation and a significantly reduced cost of attack," said the official Terra account on Twitter.

This comes after screenshots were shared, purportedly from the official Terra Discord, that said the chain would be halted and restarted with staking disabled. The idea of disabling staking would be to prevent an attack. It is unclear if this is the official plan.

This comes after the price of UST losing its peg has caused havoc for the related token Luna (which is supposed to help UST keep its peg). UST holders cashing out have caused the supply of Luna to drastically increase, while at the same time crashing its price. The supply of Luna has increased from 1.5 billion to 32.3 billion today, while its price has dropped from $1 to $0.016.

This comes a day after liquid staking protocol Lido Finance warned against a possible attack on the network. It noted that the economic security of Terra had dropped, leaving it vulnerable. "It's theoretically possible to halt the network and freeze these assets in an elaborate economic attack," the project said on Twitter.

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About Author

Tim is the Editor-In-Chief of The Block. Prior to joining The Block, Tim was a news editor at Decrypt. He has earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy from the University of York and studied news journalism at Press Association Training. Follow him on X @Timccopeland.