Apparent Zcash outage was a block explorer problem, infrastructure provider says

For a few hours Wednesday Asia time, Zcash’s blockchain appeared not to be producing any new blocks — but that’s an issue with the block explorers themselves, not the chain, per some observers.

Think of the blockchain as a ledger that keeps growing as new transactions are added. Each “block” is a new entry in the ledger. So, when the network stops making new blocks, no new transactions can be confirmed. This is like the entire payment system freezing for several hours.

According to multiple Zcash block explorers, the most recent block was number 3,364,601, created at 5:27 AM UTC on June 3. After that, no new blocks appeared for over four hours. Normally, Zcash adds a new block roughly every 75 seconds (just over a minute).

CoinDesk reached out to Zcash for a comment on the matter.

Mert Mumtaz CEO of Helius, an infrastructure provider to Solana, explained that this is an issue of some block explorers not updating their nodes since the network upgrade yesterday. Mumtaz said that they are working on updates now.

Zcash’s native token ZEC has surged 8% over the past week, according to CoinDesk data, bucking the broader market weakness. The token has gained 46% in the last month.

For crypto investors, this event is a reminder that even well-known networks can run into technical hiccups.

11:00 UTC: Updates title and text to say the issue may have been with the block explorers.