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:
Validator outages
Protocol non-determinism
Software bugs
and can take days to recover from — even after the fix.
Consensus mechanisms like Casper sacrifice instant finality and simplicity to prevent non-liveness!
Typical Chain Halt recovery
💡 Here's how chain-halt recovery typically works:
Address the core issue (see above)
Update the core blockchain software and publish (if applicable)
Distribute the software to at least two-thirds (⅔) validator power
Re-deploy those validators with the new software
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...
Enhanced reliability and continuity of operation
Preserved investor and community confidence, preventing asset devaluation
Peace-of-mind for new teams launching projects — knowing the Root Chain can recover operations in emergencies
Understand the 'how' of Chain Halt Rescue in How does Canopy work?✅
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