Liquid’s System for Faster Bitcoin Trades Was Broken for a Day

(Bloomberg) -- Liquid Network, whose platform is designed to speed up Bitcoin trades and make them more confidential, malfunctioned on Monday and remained down into the next day, becoming the latest of several recent high-profile technical problems to strike the booming crypto space.

“We’re aware of an issue with the Liquid Network and are working to resolve it as soon as possible,” according to its Twitter account, in a post Monday evening New York time. “Please keep an eye on our account for updates.”

Tuesday afternoon, a statement from Liquid’s overnight board said “block production” would resume within 24 hours. Shortly before 4 p.m. New York time, the issue appeared to be resolved as blocks started processing again, according to Liquid’s website. 

Crypto is rapidly going mainstream, bringing more attention to software breakdowns. Solana, a high-performance blockchain, was unavailable for most of a day in mid-September. The Pyth Network, a data service that counts some of the world’s most sophisticated traders as participants, stumbled about a week later because of some relatively simple software bugs -- making it appear Bitcoin’s price had plunged about 90%, though it hadn’t. Pyth ran into more problems Tuesday when Synthetify -- a new cryptocurrency platform for trading synthetic assets -- said it was forced to shut down shortly after its debut because of bad data provided by the Pyth Network.

Liquid is a sidechain -- a platform that augments the Bitcoin blockchain, allowing for quicker transactions than the notoriously sluggish technology that underpins the original cryptocurrency. The glitch occurred as Bitcoin rallied past $50,000, reaching the highest price since early September.

Blockstream Corp. develops the Liquid technology.

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