Are there cracks emerging in the Ethereum infrastructure? It has always boasted of instant transactions, so the slow transaction times caused by a backlog have taken many by surprise. This has also lead a lot of exchanges to temporarily hold all ETH transactions.
In a tweet Bitfinex notified that it has suspended all ETH withdrawals “as the Ethereum network continues to experience extreme delays” until the network backlog subsides.
CEX.IO tweeted the same thing, as did BTC-E, which cited the “unstoppable operation of the Ethereum network due to the network load.”
ShapeShift’s support site advised users not to submit a ticket if they have not received ETH or an ETH token, but to wait 24 hours.
I have personally observed this when I submitted my share for the Status ICO. The transaction started and was lost so many times I lost count of it. It was finally completed some 14 hours after I had originally submitted it.
On June 20, the network recorded 300,000 transactions, according to data from Etherscan.
Startups based on the Ethereum network have been hosting ICOs which have been pressuring the network this week.
The Status ICO clogged up the network yesterday with “a huge number of high gas fee transactions, most of which are failing but still filling up the blocks and preventing normal tx’s from getting in,” according to a subreddit post.
The backlog appears to have taken the wind out of Ethereum’s price surge, driven by its smart contract and decentralized application functions. Ethereum’s price had been on a roll, breaking the $400 mark this month.
ETH fell to a low of $13 on Wednesday evening on GDAX during a 'flash crash'.
