# Chain Halt Rescue

### What's a Chain Halt?

💡 A chain halt is a "prolonged" period of non-liveness (no new blocks are being created) due to a consensus failure. 

This can be thought of as an emergency situation for blockchains because it freezes the crypto-economy, often **obstructing the core offering of the network.**

Chain-halts are most often caused by:

1. Validator outages
2. Protocol non-determinism
3. Software bugs

and can take days to recover from — **even after the fix.**

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Consensus mechanisms like Casper sacrifice instant finality and simplicity to prevent non-liveness!
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### Typical Chain Halt recovery

💡 Here's how chain-halt recovery typically works:

1. Address the core issue (see above)
2. Update the core blockchain software and publish (if applicable)
3. Distribute the software to at least **two-thirds (⅔)** validator power
4. Re-deploy those validators with the new software
5. Socially coordinate a 'recovery' event to 'restart' the validators at the same time.

**Steps 3, 4, and 5 often prolong chain halts an additional 24 hours... leading to fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the network.**

### Chain Halt Rescue

Canopy introduces a unique security mechanism that prevents unnecessary delay when a Canopy Nested-Chain encounters a chain halt.

**Due to Canopy's nested design, Security Root's auto-recover Nested-Chains from non-liveness.** 

Resulting in...

1. Enhanced reliability and continuity of operation
2. Preserved investor and community confidence, preventing asset devaluation
3. Peace-of-mind for new teams launching projects — knowing the Root Chain can recover operations in emergencies

{% hint style="info" %}
Understand the 'how' of Chain Halt Rescue in [How Does Canopy Work?](/docs/canopy-network/how-does-canopy-work.md)✅
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