Starknet, Ethereum’s Layer 2 network that uses zero-knowledge (ZK) rollups, is experiencing fresh disruptions on the mainnet as the project enters 2026.
WX postthe Starknet team stated that the network was at risk of an outage and that engineers were “actively investigating the issue and working to restore full functionality as quickly as possible,” without immediately disclosing the root cause. At the time of writing, the network had an outage of just over two hours.
Starknet is a layer 2 based on ZK-rollup that batch transactions offchain and transfers cryptographic proofs to Ethereum, aiming to provide higher throughput and lower fees for shrewd contracts, decentralized finance and gaming applications, while inheriting the security of Ethereum’s base layer.
The project also promoted Bitcoin DeFi (BTCFi), touting itself as an infrastructure for bringing Bitcoin-related financial applications into the Ethereum ecosystem. Despite network disruptions, the price of the STRK token has held steady at the time of writing.
Related: Ethereum’s first ZK-rollup suite, ZKsync Lite, will be retired in 2026
This isn’t the first time the Starknet mainnet has gone down
The incident followed a series of outages in 2025 that brought Starknet’s reliability under greater scrutiny. In September, a major update known as Gravel (v0.14.0) led to prolonged mainnet disruptions that resulted in block production being halted and requiring two chain reorganizations, reversing approximately an hour of activity and forcing users to resubmit affected transactions.
This episode follows an earlier multi-hour outage in 2025 related to sequencer issues, during which external trackers recorded multiple instances of sluggish or stopped block creation throughout the year.
Starknet September event report stated that the Grinta-related outage lasted approximately nine hours and linked the issues to a sequence of issues, including Ethereum RPC provider failures and bugs affecting sequencer behavior, prompting the team to engage in architectural changes and expanded monitoring.
A Starknet representative told Cointelegraph that the team is working to fix the fresh incident.
