The MultiversX blockchain network brought its mainnet back online on Thursday, Sept. 24, resolving an emergency halt that lasted approximately five days. However, cryptocurrency exchange Kraken continues to enforce cancel-only trading and paused deposit and withdrawal services for the network's native token, EGLD.
Network Recovery and Technical Upgrade
The network disruption began on Sept. 19, when @MultiversX halted network progression after detecting an attempted exploit involving a virtual-machine atomicity issue that generated invalid state changes. Following five days of offline engineering checks, technical handle @CodeMultiversX announced that a recovery upgrade was successfully deployed, allowing block production and normal network operations to resume.
The official MultiversX gateway reflected new block production with a Sept. 24 timestamp. Despite on-chain operations returning to normal, @CodeMultiversX advised users to monitor exchange-specific notices, warning that centralized platforms may take several days to complete internal verification before re-enabling services. While major security incidents across the industry, such as recent platform breaches like the Duelbits hot wallet hack or Bitget's security incident, often trigger exchange precautions, exchange reopenings operate on independent timelines.
Kraken Retains EGLD Operational Limits
Despite the mainnet recovery, Kraken's official status page as of Sept. 24 showed ongoing restrictions on EGLD markets. The exchange maintains a cancel-only mode for EGLD trading pairs—preventing new orders while allowing cancellation of existing orders—and keeps deposits and withdrawals disabled.
- Sept. 16: Kraken first reported potential funding-gateway delays for EGLD.
- Sept. 19: MultiversX paused network progression due to a virtual-machine atomicity exploit; Kraken moved EGLD pairs to cancel-only mode and paused transfers.
- Sept. 24: MultiversX deployed a recovery upgrade and restored mainnet block production, while Kraken retained its trading and transfer restrictions without a published resolution time.
Kraken's initial funding gateway warnings on Sept. 16 predated MultiversX's official exploit announcement on Sept. 19, meaning the dates alone do not confirm whether initial exchange delays were directly connected to the virtual-machine issue.
Why It Matters
This incident underscores the operational gap between layer-1 blockchain resilience and exchange liquidity infrastructure. Even when a blockchain successfully restores consensus and state integrity after a major technical failure, centralized exchanges must conduct independent risk audits and node synchronization before reopening user access. For EGLD token holders, full market liquidity remains locked on platforms like Kraken until exchange risk teams independently clear the network's upgraded client code.
