Even though the Ethereum network is functioning perfectly, users of Ethereum-built DApps (particularly, MetaMask users) can’t say the same thing.

Chaos On Social Media

Ethereum users on these DApps can’t access the network because the Infura network, which connects the DApps with Ethereum, suffered an outage in the early hours of this morning. MetaMask users were among the first to complain about their accessibility to access the Ethereum network.

A status update from one of Infura’s social accounts at about 13:44 UTC stated that the network is having issues with lots of APIs, which are the bridges with which it connects with the Ethereum network. Besides Ethereum APIs, other scaling solutions such as Polygon and Arbitrum were also affected.

Wish we could say GM fam.

We apologize for the service disruption and inconvenience. Our team is all-hands-on-deck working to resolve the incident.

Please follow https://t.co/096rxS73SR for more information.

— Infura (@infura_io) April 22, 2022

Following news of the outage, our team made several unsuccessful attempts at completing transactions on Uniswap and OpenSea. Etherscan reports also revealed a significant drop in gas fees to an average of 16 Gwei. Also, Ethereum nodes data revealed that some top nodes, such as AnyBlock and AVADO, were negatively affected.

Updates And More Complaints

Infura’s update about the outage around 15:09 UTC stated that its team is already on top of the situation. Part of the update reads, “the situation is almost resolved, and we are about to restart our core systems. The remaining components will be restored gradually till normal service is restored.”

When some media men sought comments from one of Infura’s spokespeople, he declined to make comments, saying, “I can’t make any comments on this situation right now since our engineers are working hard to solve the problem at hand.” Many Ethereum users (especially NFT creators) flooded their social media timelines to complain about the incident.

This outage is a huge blow for many Ethereum users as many project creators (DApps and NFT creators) build their projects on this network. Even though the Ethereum network is completely decentralized, it still requires some external components to make it work effectively.

Hence, when any such components break down, many users are usually affected negatively. It is the second time the Infura network has been attacked. The first time was in November 2020, with a review of the incident by the Infura team saying, “while we’ve been in this business for four years, it is the first time our services will be severely interrupted.”

A Possible Long-Term Solution

Some network experts have suggested that the best solution for Infura to prevent a future occurrence is to run its self-owned Ethereum node instead of relying on the Ethereum infrastructure.

Similar outages have resulted in the creation of properly decentralized API solutions. One of such creations is the pocket network – a node system from several chains through which users can explore web3 without depending on a centralized service.

Three months ago, the company generated $11M in a series b fundraise to expand the scope of its operations. It remains to be seen whether Infura can implement the suggestions from the experts as stated above.