On July 3rd 2018 at around 00:46 am UTC, the steem blockchain was frozen at block number 23847548 witnessed by @someguy123. At the time of writing of this article, I'm not sure what is happening but it looks like it is a bug inside steemd the software that runs on the witness nodes. Steemit Inc is aware and their devs are working on it as per their Twitter account:
Nothing is working, this is a huge issue. Steemit.com is not responsive, mostly returning an 504 Gateway Time-out page, trying to load for ever or showing content but users can't interact with it.
Is it just an invalid transaction that has triggered a bug inside steemd? Or did a hacker find an exploit within the software and managed to forge a transaction that would freeze all witnesses nodes?
Updates
I woke up at 6:30 pm after my long afternoon nap to get ready for my night shift and the fix was released a little bit earlier. Some witnesses were busy recompiling steemd using the recent code released by Steemit Inc.
steemd is recompiled but the process is stalled for a long time, I might have to do a replay. I've disabled my witness just in case. This will give me more time to handle this properly without rush and without missing a block.
Thanks for that explanation. I was trying to upload a video last night and held up because I had no clue what was happening...
I read it too. It was a scary morning lol
Thanks for the update on the freeze.
Hey, is the name of your witness the same as your handle?
Yes it is the same 😊
Done. :)
Much appreciated. Thank you.