2 posts tagged with "network-health"

Something significant happened to Ethereum four days ago, and it's largely flown under the radar.

On March 2, 2026, between roughly 10:24 and 13:00 UTC, the mainnet experienced its most severe consensus disruption since the proof-of-stake transition. Block orphan rates hit 68%. Validator participation collapsed to zero in at least one epoch. The chain stopped finalizing — not for twenty minutes like the May 2023 incident, but for close to three hours.

This is the third network incident in twelve days.

Ethereum's block orphan rate should be nearly zero. It isn't — and the reasons why are more interesting than the number itself.

Over the last 30 days, 1,783 blocks were proposed on mainnet and then lost. Not missed (nobody tried), not reverted (execution failed) — proposed, gossiped, and then quietly discarded when another block won the fork choice. That's 59 blocks per day that disappeared into the void.

Most of them arrived on time.