Harmony: Network outage due to node validation issues resolved

Harmony has announced that it has resolved the network interruption caused by node validation issues. On February 10th, the Harmony mainnet node got stuck, causing the network to stagnate. This problem can be traced back to an "already known block" error, indicating that there are deeper problems with block and shard state validation. After investigation, the Harmony team found that the root cause was the lack of shard state data required for block validation in snapDB. This led to expired cross-links causing validation failures, causing the network to be stuck in a loop of view changes.

The Harmony team then implemented a fix to ignore old cross-links in block proposals, ensuring that only valid blocks are processed. This method restored network functionality without compromising integrity. After resolving the issue, the team updated the cross-link management logic and closely monitored the network to prevent similar problems. The total recovery time exceeded the initial 26-hour interruption to ensure full stability. Harmony stated that it will focus on optimizing database management and improving consensus mechanisms in the future to enhance network resilience and improve communication channels.