Starknet Faces Mainnet Disruption Amid Ongoing Reliability Concerns

According to Cointelegraph, Starknet, a prominent Ethereum layer-2 network utilizing zero-knowledge (ZK) rollups, is encountering new mainnet disruptions as the project progresses into 2026. The Starknet team announced via an X post that the network was experiencing downtime, with engineers actively investigating the issue to restore full functionality swiftly. However, the root cause of the disruption was not immediately disclosed. At the time of reporting, the network had been down for over two hours. Starknet operates as a ZK-rollup-based layer-2 solution, designed to batch transactions off-chain and submit cryptographic proofs to Ethereum. This approach aims to enhance throughput and reduce fees for smart contracts, decentralized finance, and gaming applications, while maintaining Ethereum's base-layer security. Despite the current network disruption, the STRK token price remained stable. The recent incident is not isolated, as Starknet has faced a series of outages throughout 2025, raising concerns about its reliability. In September, a significant upgrade named Grinta (v0.14.0) resulted in prolonged mainnet disruption, halting block production and necessitating two chain reorganizations. This led to approximately an hour of activity being reverted and required users to resubmit affected transactions. Earlier in 2025, Starknet experienced a multi-hour outage linked to sequencer issues, with external trackers documenting several instances of slow or halted block creation during the year. A Starknet incident report regarding the September event detailed that the Grinta-related downtime lasted around nine hours. The report identified a sequence of issues, including failures in Ethereum RPC providers and bugs affecting sequencer behavior, which prompted the team to commit to architectural changes and enhanced monitoring. A representative from Starknet informed Cointelegraph that efforts are underway to resolve the current incident.