In an unexpected turn of events, Ethereum scaling network Arbitrum experienced a “partial outage” on Friday, disrupting activity on the Arbitrum One blockchain—a first since June. The outage, attributed to a substantial surge in network traffic, lasted for over an hour before being successfully resolved by Offchain Labs, the company behind Arbitrum.
The culprit behind this surge in activity? “Inscriptions.” These inscriptions involve the etching of artwork and media directly onto the blockchain, similar to the concept of NFTs (non-fungible tokens), but with a twist. This surge in inscriptions resulted in a temporary halt to transaction processing on the Arbitrum network.
Offchain Labs addressed the issue on Twitter, confirming that the sustained surge of inscriptions led to a malfunction in the network’s sequencer, disrupting the proper relay of transactions. While the problem has been resolved, the backlog caused a temporary increase in gas prices. The team assured users that gas prices would normalize soon.
Arbitrum users and services dependent on the network took to Twitter to express their frustration, reporting a complete inability to process transactions during the outage. Arbiscan, a blockchain explorer for Arbitrum, initially pointed to a “surge in activities due to inscriptions” as the cause of the network failure, aligning with users’ observations. However, the website later adjusted its language to align with Arbitrum’s official statement, removing specific references to inscriptions.
Inscriptions gained popularity with the success of Bitcoin Ordinals earlier this year. These are intricate images or media pieces engraved into cryptocurrency denominations. While resource-intensive and challenging for blockchains to process, inscriptions found a logical fit on the Bitcoin network, which lacks smart contract capabilities and cannot support NFTs.
However, recent trends reveal users engaging in the energy-intensive practice of creating inscriptions on networks that already support NFTs. The Polygon, BNB Chain, and Avalanche blockchains witnessed a significant uptick in inscription-related traffic, accounting for 57% of total traffic across these networks in the past week, as reported by blockchain analyst Hildobby.
Arbitrum One specifically experienced a surge, with inscription transactions constituting 30% of all traffic in the past week, according to data from Dune Analytics.
Before the official confirmation of the cause, users on Twitter expressed frustration at the prospect of inscription-related traffic causing Arbitrum’s outage. Many view this innovation as excessively costly and question its practical utility, especially when applied to networks that already support NFTs.
