Nodes For Stellar Development Foundation Have Gone Dark

Long Beach (CoinChapter): Nodes for the Stellar Development Foundation have stopped validating transactions for the blockchain. The SDF is the organization that supports development on the Stellar Network. The Stellar network works to connect banks to a more accessible payment system for global transactions.

The SDF said in a statement that the outage occurred around 1:00 AM PDT. The statement added that, “the SDF’s public Horizon API instance is also temporarily down. However, the Stellar network is still online [emphasis SDF’s].”

They added that they are working to solve the problem and insist the network is still operational despite SDF’s own nodes not working. They continued in their statement, “Because it is decentralized, and the majority of Stellar network validator nodes are still functioning, the network continues to process transactions.

“The network itself has not halted. Additionally, anyone who runs their own Horizon instance rather than relying on the public SDF instance can still use the API to submit transactions and query network data.”

Validator nodes are computers which run blockchain software. Generally, the more distributed the nodes are, the more secure the network is. This is because the network can continue to run even if some nodes are not functioning.

In addition to SDF, payment processing firms such as COINQVEST, Wirex, and SatoshiPay run nodes as well. According to StellarBeat, all of those nodes remain active. Other validator nodes are failing however, likely due to reliance on Stellar’s Horizon API rather than running their own. The network as a whole now has just 21 validator nodes.

Exchanges are monitoring the Nodes for Stellar, until the issue is resolved

Cryptocurrency exchanges are monitoring the situation closely until the issue is resolved. Bitstamp has already announced that it is pausing withdrawals of Stellar Network currency XLM. Coinbase has also said that it is investigating the situation. XLM is the 12th-largest cryptocurrency in the world, with a market cap of more than $26 billion.