Coinbase's Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution, Base, experienced its first network outage since its 2023 debut on August 5, 2025. The disruption lasted approximately 30 minutes, halting all block production, deposits, withdrawals, and flashblock operations due to an "unsafe head delay" technical fault that prevented transaction confirmations.
The incident began at 06:15 UTC, with Base's status page confirming the disruption. Coinbase resolved the issue by 06:44 UTC after identifying the root cause, though CEO Brian Armstrong offered no public comment. The outage impacted Ethereum and related tokens, causing transaction delays across decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms built on Base, including the $1.5 billion Morpho lending protocol which anchors Base's $4.2 billion total value locked (TVL).
Concurrently, Coinbase announced a $2 billion debt plan, triggering an immediate stock price decline. Analysts linked the drop to concerns over liquidity management and operational resilience, noting historical parallels to Layer-2 outages in September 2023 and Solana network downtimes.