Yesterday, the Base chain suddenly "froze," with no blocks produced for a full half hour (meaning transactions couldn't be confirmed). 🔧 Why did this happen? Because Base uses a technology called OP Stack, which is designed to have only one "sequencer" responsible for packaging transactions. This sequencer acts like a master dispatcher; if it encounters a problem, the entire chain goes down. Yesterday, the sequencer node for Base went down, and when switching to a backup node, there was a configuration error, resulting in the chain completely "crashing." In the end, it had to be manually switched to restore functionality. 🧠 Why is there only one sequencer? Isn't blockchain supposed to be decentralized? This is actually an economic issue, not purely a technical one. #Base is currently one of the most profitable L2 chains, earning 70 million dollars last year, and even made 150,000 dollars on the day it crashed. If the sequencer were opened up to more people (decentralized), Base would have to share gas fee revenues with others. Thus, the operators are unwilling to "share the pie" and prefer to control the nodes themselves, reaping the rewards. ⚠️ What does this mean? 🔹 High risk: A single point of failure could halt the entire chain. 🔹 Severe centralization: Although L2 claims to offer scalability and decentralization, many chains still operate in a centralized manner. 🔹 Economic incentives hinder improvements: As long as they can still make money, the project team has no motivation to truly decentralize. ✅ In summary: The Base crash occurred because it only has one sequencer node, and when that node encounters an issue, the chain stops. The reason they don't change this is that they make a lot of money from this node and don't want to share it with others. Did you learn anything??