The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, temporarily suspended Bitcoin network withdrawals before resuming them after three hours.
According to the report, the network had to be paused due to a backlog of Bitcoin network withdrawals which was caused by an earlier batch of transactions becoming stuck due to low transaction fees submitted.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao announced the temporary halt on Twitter stating that the problem would be resolved in 30 minutes and withdrawals would resume.
However, even after 30 minutes passed the process didn’t resume. Zhao then responded stating that the suspension had solely impacted the Bitcoin network and that resolving the issue would take longer than planned.
Only the Bitcoin network was affected due to the halt, and users could still withdraw $BTC on Ethereum or BNB Chain(ERC20 & BEP20).
CZ assured that the “Funds are SAFU,” and SAFU stands for Secure Asset Fund for Users, an emergency insurance fund established by Binance.
Binance resumed the Bitcoin network withdrawals after about 3 hours. The team gave a detailed report on what actually went down in the network.
The team was correcting minor hardware failures on wallet consolidation nodes, which allowed previously pending transactions to be broadcast to the network when the nodes were restored.
Because of the low gas fee on these pending consolidation transactions, withdrawal transactions pointing to the pending consolidation UTXO became stalled and could not be executed.
To resolve the issue, the team had to alter the logic so that only successful UTXO from consolidation or withdrawal transactions were taken. This fix ensures that the problem does not recur, Binance added.
Binance is still working on processing the pending Bitcoin network withdrawals, which is supposed to be finished soon. The user deposits are reportedly unaffected.
The exchange warned that any Bitcoin network withdrawals that are pending will be rejected. The relevant users will need to resubmit their withdrawal requests.
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