A major crypto network was down because it ran out of money

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Arbitrum, a leading cryptocurrency network with a market capitalization of over US$1.4 billion (AUD$2.4 billion), halted early today as it essentially ran out of funds to the gas. Ouch!

The network was unable to process cryptocurrency transactions for more than an hour because its sequencer, a central software that facilitates transactions, did not have enough money, or in this case, gas fees .

As a result, over US$2.24 billion (AUD$3.36 billion) in crypto deposits were sitting on the blockchain silently.

What are gas fees in crypto?

Gas, in the crypto world, refers to the unit that measures the amount of computational effort required to perform specific operations on, in this case, the Arbitrum network.

Any user who wants to perform a crypto transaction, such as paying someone in crypto or buying an NFT, must pay a gas fee to move the transaction forward. It could be thought of as the crypto worlds equivalent of transaction fees when making online payments.

Arbitrum wants to improve Ethereum, but

The Arbitrum network, at its core, aims to offer a blockchain network that is a step up from what Ethereum currently has in terms of infrastructure. It offers faster, more scalable solutions and more privacy for users.

Arbitrum uses Ether (ETH) to pay gas fees on its network, and it usually has a large supply of ETH to do so. It is important to note here that unlike a traditional banking platform where transaction fees are usually fixed, gas fees fluctuate wildly. This is due to a number of factors, the main one being that there can be a lot of people trying to process transactions at the same time at a certain time of the day.

But in this case, the blockchain network simply ran out of ETH stock. No one really knows why. But the shutdown was long enough to freak out the crypto bros.

According to DLNews, the Arbitrum team also confirmed on Discord that they were unable to connect to the network sequencer.

So what did Arbitrum do? The network had to be manually replenished with Ether, according to DLNews. We imagine an intern rushing into Arbitrums headquarters with a massive sandbag, frantically pouring Ethereum coins into a CPU.

As of this writing, the Arbitrum now appears to have resumed regular operations. Phew.

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