What to know:
- Paradex confirmed it rolled back the chain to block 1,604,710 after a faulty database migration caused erroneous pricing data.
- The glitch sent bitcoin’s price to zero on the exchange, triggering mass liquidations; all open orders were force-cancelled except take-profit/stop-loss (TPSL) orders.
- Trading resumed at 12:10 UTC following roughly eight hours offline, while Starknet’s STRK token fell about 3.6% after the incident.
Paradex, a decentralized exchange on the Starknet network, has confirmed a rollback after a data error caused the price of bitcoin to hit zero on the platform, triggering mass liquidations.
A Paradex team member wrote on Discord on Monday morning that the issue occurred following a database migration and that the chain would be rolled back to before the migration took place.
“All open orders will be forced cancelled except TPSL ( take-profit/stop-loss) orders,” they added.
In a follow up update on its status page, Paradex wrote that: “We can confirm that all user funds are SAFU. Due to the complexity of the recovery process, we do not have a confirmed ETA at this time.”
The exchange, which had notched $37 billion in trading volume over the past 30 days, came back on line at 12:10 UTC after around eight hours of downtime.
Decentralized exchanges like Paradex do not operate under traditional regulatory oversight, and issues such as database bugs, smart contract glitches, or integration problems with underlying chains can have outsized impacts on trading and liquidity.
Starknet’s STRK token traded 3.6% lower after the data error occurred.
The glitch marks another blow for Paradex after its team suffered significant losses during the FTX collapse. The exchange was founded by liquidity network Paradigm, a firm that reportedly lost nearly 70% of client funds and 60% of its own treasury in the collapse.
A rollback is when a blockchain application resets its state to an earlier point in time to undo faulty data or transactions after a technical error, and is typically used as an emergency fix to restore normal operation and protect user funds.
These are, however, often met with criticism as it fails to keep a constant ledger of transactions intact, while disrupting the decentralized nature of blockchain technology. Layer 1 network Flow floated the idea of a rollback in December, eventually deciding against it after community outrage.
Monday’s incident is the latest in a tumultuous few months for Paradex.
In September, the platform suffered a prolonged disruption after a bot attack overloaded legacy systems tied to its account creation services, leading to widespread latency and forced order cancellations.
