Pyth Network experienced a significant outage on Thursday that crippled its core price feeds and sponsored feeds for more than five hours, disrupting DeFi protocols reliant on real-time oracle data. The failure, which affected the legacy free product Pyth Core, was caused by issues in the Pythnet and Hermes infrastructure layers that deliver price information across multiple blockchains.
Pyth confirmed it identified the root cause and coordinated a validator restart, with service fully restored at 1:00 p.m. UTC. During the downtime, DeFi protocols using Pyth's price data for trading, lending collateral calculations, and liquidation triggers operated without reliable references, raising concerns over cascading effects like liquidations and failed trades.
The paid oracle service Pyth Pro remained fully operational throughout the incident, safeguarding major clients including Kalshi, Coinbase, and LMAX. Pyth emphasized that Pyth Core is a free legacy product scheduled to be discontinued on July 31 following a DAO decision, and urged users to migrate to the more robust paid tier. The outage coincided with a separate exploit on Polymarket's UMA CTF Adapter contract that drained over $660,000, highlighting wider DeFi infrastructure fragility on the same day.
Pyth's status page provided real-time updates, and a full incident report is expected. The event underscores the risks of relying on legacy or free oracle services and may accelerate the shift toward premium solutions.
