The Ethereum Layer-2 network Starknet has reportedly suffered a new mainnet downtime, adding another exit to the growing list of credible threats in 2025. Although the Starknet token price data remained limited at the time of publication, the network still protects about $548 million in value, so every hour you are offline you trap real money and stop real trading.
This comes as Ethereum scaling solutions race to attract users and developers, just as the outage reminds everyone that fast and cheap doesn’t always mean safe.
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What’s New on Starknet, and Why Should Everyday Users Care?
Starknet is the so-called Layer-2 network of Ethereum. Think of it as an expressway built on top of the Ethereum highway that connects many transactions together, then adjusts the result back to Ethereum for security. It uses a technology called ZK-rollup, which relies on advanced cryptography to prove that merged transactions are valid without revealing all the steps to Ethereum itself.
In 2025, that express line continued to stand still. Starknet’s own incident report, a previous outage related to its Grinta development (v0.14.0) caused serialization failures and issues with the old Cairo0 code. A sequencer is a piece of software that orders transactions on Starknet, much like a traffic cop who decides who goes first in a traffic jam.
If that traffic cop fails, everything backs up. In September 2025, Starknet’s downtime lasted nine hours and forced two job resets that erased nearly an hour of network history.
During restructuring, the chain “rolls back” to the previous state and creates a new version, which can cancel trades and transfers that users think are final. That means your exchange or loan from Starknet may disappear and require a second try.
🚨 STARKNET OUTAGE UPDATE
Starknet has been down for 2+ hours and the network is currently experiencing downtime.
• The team accepted the issue
• The investigation is ongoing
• Recovery efforts are ongoing
• The price has held up well so farMonitors updates.… pic.twitter.com/pJAu2uahen
– Wise Advice (@wiseadvicesumit) January 5, 2026
Starknet is now ranked among the largest Layer‑2 of Ethereum with approximately $548 million locked in it. That money sits in DeFi apps, NFT markets, and wallets that depend on the network staying live.
So when Starknet goes dark, users can’t move funds, close positions, or react to price changes, while markets elsewhere in Ethereum continue to move without them.
If you want a refresher on how Ethereum scaling works in general, 99Bitcoins covered it in detail when Ethereum stablecoin transfers reached $8 trillion in volume on the Ethereum Network. That big picture view helps you see why these layers are so important.
How Does This Outage Change the Layer‑2 Race in Ethereum?
Starknet competes with other Ethereum Layer‑2 platforms such as Arbitrum, Optimism, zkSync, and Coinbase’s Base. Each offers lower fees and faster guarantees than Ethereum’s mainnet, but each is still an independent network with its own risks.
Users choose them as they choose banks or brokers: whoever feels safe and smooth over time wins deposits and volume.
(Source: Total Starknet Locked Rises Before Incident / DefiLlama)
Repeated outages disappear from Starknet’s credibility story. Although it sells the advanced cryptography and strong security of Ethereum, users encounter something simple: “Can I send my money when I need to?” Networks like Arbitrum and Optimism have their problems, but they did not face the same pattern of long downtimes in 2025. That difference shapes where developers launch new apps and where users park funds.
Meanwhile, the ZK-rollup sector is constantly changing. ZKsync Lite will be retired in 2026 as teams migrate to newer versions. If the underlying infrastructure is changing rapidly, the end reminds everyone that this technology is still new.
Even if the development of Ethereum itself, like the ones we covered in our future Ethereum development guide, aims to make the main chain more efficient, the Layer-2s on top still need to prove that they can live on the Internet.
Starknet is also pushing to expand its tracker so that no single entity can control the ordering of transactions. Recent events have raised doubts about whether the network can safely make that leap. Hasty or buggy allocations can spread instability rather than mitigate it, especially when billions in value depend on that infrastructure.
For Ethereum itself, these hiccups cut both ways. On the other hand, they highlight the risks of building on new infrastructure. On the other hand, they show the need to scale and the pressure of groups to develop quickly, which is in line with the long-term goals that Vitalik Buterin sets for the growth of the network that we discussed in our piece on Ethereum.
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What Should Starknet and Ethereum Users Actually Do Now?
Before you raise money on Starknet, ask three simple questions. First: Do I understand the risk that my money may be temporarily stuck? Second: Do I really need low fees for this trading strategy or yield? Three: Can I leave this money alone if something breaks for a few hours or a day?
Traders and DeFi users should also view incident reports such as those posted by Starknet on its blog. If I were an investor, I would be watching closely how the team handles this incident over the next few days.
Teams that publish clear timelines, fixes, and follow-up plans often handle problems better in the long run than silent teams. But transparency does not eliminate risk. It only helps you to judge how well the project handles your deposits.
(Source: STRKUSD / TradingView)
For beginners choosing where to start with Ethereum DeFi, a simple rule helps: enable stability first, speed second. Learn how the Ethereum mainnet, large Layer‑2s, and DeFi applications work before expanding to gain more leverage on less-explored networks.
Starknet’s next move, how quickly it sets up a tracker, how openly it reports corrections, and how it handles fragmentation, will determine whether users trust it with their extra ETH. As the competition for Layer‑2 increases, these loyalty issues will become as important as APY and payouts.
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