Key Insights:
- Ethereum layer 2 Starknet went offline for over four hours after its Grinta upgrade.
- Developers rolled back blocks, requiring users to resubmit transactions.
- L2Beat data placed Starknet fifth among Ethereum Layer 2 networks.
Ethereum Layer 2 network Starknet went offline on September 2 for more than four hours after its Grinta upgrade.
As a result of the outage, block production stopped and transactions failed on the mainnet.
However, the network later came back online, with activity restored and users asked to resubmit unprocessed transactions.
Starknet Halts for Over Four Hours
Starknet, one of Ethereum’s main Layer 2 networks, stopped working on September 2 after a planned upgrade.
The outage started at around 6:00 AM GMT when the Grinta upgrade, also known as version 0.14.0, went live.
According to the update, soon after, block production stalled and transactions could not be processed.
Developers first said the pause would last about 15 minutes. Instead, the network stayed offline for more than four hours.
During that time, users saw blocks fail to confirm and gateways sit idle. Transactions sent during this period were not included on the chain.
At 2:23 AM UTC, Starknet blocks stopped recording activity. The disruption lasted until 4:36 AM UTC. To restore service, developers rolled back from block 1960612.
Basically, this reorganization meant that every transaction during that one-hour window was dropped.
As noted, users must now resubmit those transactions for them to be processed. Meanwhile, partial recovery began within 20 minutes, but full block production only returned later in the day.
By midday, developers said the network was back online. Block creation was stable again, and most RPC providers had restarted.
A few providers still needed to update, but were expected to catch up quickly.
The Starknet team promised a full report covering the timeline, the root cause, and steps to avoid similar problems in the future.
Starknet Place in the Layer 2 Market
It is important to add that the outage put focus on Starknet role in the Ethereum scaling market.
Layer 2 networks process transactions off-chain and then send them to Ethereum for settlement. This makes activity data an important measure of growth.
According to L2Beat, Starknet ranked fifth among rollups at the start of September.
On September 1, the network handled 7.03 user operations per second. Its 30-day activity reached 15.29 million, down by 4.80%.
Starknet’s peak came on October 29, 2024, when it reached 128.79 user operations per second.
Its ratio of user operations to transactions stood at 2.92, showing that many transactions were bundled together in each block.
Other networks still led in overall activity. Base Chain processed 130.76 user operations per second on the same day.
Arbitrum One reached 29.94, while OP Mainnet was at 12.98. Even so, Starknet’s share showed that it remained a key player in the sector.
The Grinta upgrade was meant to improve decentralization and speed. Instead, it exposed how fragile upgrades can be in active systems.
For Starknet, keeping performance steady is crucial as more users join and as competition among Layer 2 networks grows.
STRK Token Reacts to Disruption
Starknet token STRK moved lower during the outage. Data showed STRK price traded at $0.1232 while the network was offline, down over 3% in 24 hours.
After the service returned, the token was recorded at $0.1235. This still marked a daily loss of 3.15%.
The price change was small, but the reaction showed that traders watched the outage closely.
When millions of transactions have to be resubmitted, confidence can be tested, even if recovery follows quickly.
For now, Starknet is back online. Blocks are being produced, and most providers are in sync.
Developers said a detailed review would be published soon, giving users a clearer view of what happened and how it will be prevented in the future.
Source: https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2025/09/03/ethereum-l2-starknet-back-online-after-brief-outage-what-happened/
