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.

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:

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

Understand the 'how' of Chain Halt Rescue in How does Canopy work?✅