The Association would like to provide a brief update for the community on the performance of the Casper Network over the New year period. As you know, from January 2nd to January 4th the network entered a period of extremely high transaction volume. The significant volume resulted in a transaction backlog, which in turn led to increased network, IO, and CPU demand, resulting in performance drops in the network and nodes. At one point the validator count dropped to 68 and total stake weight dropped to 51%.
Teams across the ecosystem, including Casper Labs and Casper Association, worked to triage the problem and implement a fix. As a result, network performance returned to normal state and on Tuesday January 9, 2024, the validator count achieved 100 and stake was 69%. The Casper Association, alongside Casper Labs, are preparing an Incident Analysis report, in order to review cause, effect & impact. More importantly, the report will act as a forcing factor to ensure that the long term solutions linked to this network slowdown are implemented. We expect to share this report here in the next few weeks.
Casper Network node operators did a great job helping to troubleshoot the issues with the network and actively contributed to re-establish the stable state of the network. The Association wishes to thank the community for their support and rapid engagement during this network slowdown.