Starknet mainnet hit by fresh downtime as team probes cause

Starknet, a starring Ethereum layer‑2 web that uses zero‑knowledge (ZK) rollups, is experiencing caller mainnet disruption arsenic the task enters 2026.

In an X post, the Starknet squad said the web was facing downtime and that engineers were “actively investigating the contented and moving to reconstruct afloat functionality arsenic rapidly arsenic possible,” without instantly disclosing a basal cause. At the clip of writing, the web had been experiencing downtime for conscionable implicit 2 hours.

​Starknet is simply a ZK‑rollup–based layer‑2 that batches transactions off‑chain and posts cryptographic proofs to Ethereum, aiming to present higher throughput and little fees for smart contracts, decentralized finance, and gaming applications portion inheriting Ethereum’s base‑layer security. 

Starknet mainnet is down. Source: Voyager Online

The task has besides promoted a Bitcoin DeFi, oregon BTCFi, arc, pitching itself arsenic infrastructure for bringing Bitcoin‑related fiscal applications into the Ethereum ecosystem. Despite the web disruption, the STRK token terms held dependable astatine the clip of writing.

STRK token terms remained steady. Source: CoinMarketCap

Related: Ethereum’s archetypal ZK-rollup, ZKsync Lite, to beryllium retired successful 2026

Not the archetypal clip Starknet mainnet is down

​The incidental follows a bid of outages successful 2025 that person enactment Starknet’s reliability nether person scrutiny. In September, a large upgrade known arsenic Grinta (v0.14.0) led to an extended mainnet disruption successful which artifact accumulation was halted, and two concatenation reorganizations were required, reverting astir an hr of enactment and forcing users to resubmit affected transactions. 

That occurrence followed an earlier multi‑hour outage successful 2025 tied to sequencer issues, with outer trackers logging aggregate incidents of dilatory oregon halted artifact instauration crossed the year.

​A Starknet incident study connected the September event said the Grinta‑related downtime lasted astir 9 hours and traced the problems to a series of issues, including failures successful Ethereum RPC providers and bugs that affected sequencer behavior, prompting the squad to perpetrate to architectural changes and expanded monitoring. 

The typical from Starknet told Cointelegraph that the squad was moving to repair the incident.