Ontology mainnet halts again; Upbit, Bithumb suspend ONT, ONG and MBL transfers

The Ontology (ONT) mainnet has produced no new blocks since late on Oct. 10. The last block recorded on public nodes run by the Ontology Foundation is No. 20,911,825, produced at 11:48:11 p.m. Korea Standard Time (KST) on Oct. 10. The block height was still unchanged after 3:30 p.m. KST on Oct. 11. Upbit and Bithumb, which list Ontology-based assets on their Korean won markets, suspended deposits and withdrawals.

Upbit and Bithumb block transfers but keep trading open

In a notice posted at 1:17 a.m. KST on Oct. 11, Upbit said it was suspending deposits and withdrawals of Ontology (ONT), Ontology Gas (ONG) and MovieBloc (MBL), citing a "network block production halt." All three assets run on the Ontology network. The exchange cited Article 17, Item 1(a) of the Enforcement Decree of South Korea's Virtual Asset User Protection Act as the legal basis. The suspension will last until Upbit confirms that deposits and withdrawals are stable and announces a resumption through the same notice, and trading will continue without interruption, the exchange said.

Bithumb also announced that it would suspend deposits and withdrawals of the same three assets from 12:55 a.m. KST on Oct. 11. It cited the halt in Ontology block production and said it would announce the resumption time separately. As of 3:30 p.m. KST on Oct. 11, deposits and withdrawals of ONT, ONG and MBL were all blocked on Bithumb.

Blocks that came every 20-odd seconds stopped

Records from Ontology's public nodes show no sign of trouble with block production through the evening of Oct. 10. Block No. 20,911,000 was produced at 6:39:10 p.m. KST and No. 20,911,800 at 11:40:04 p.m., or 800 blocks in about five hours, an average of one every 22.6 seconds. The last 10 or so blocks also came at intervals of 7 to 31 seconds. The record stops at No. 20,911,825, which came 8 seconds after No. 20,911,824 at 11:48:03 p.m. The final block contains one transaction.

While blocks are halted, no transfers on Ontology can be processed. ONT is Ontology's native coin, and ONG is the coin used to pay transaction fees on the network. MovieBloc (MBL) was included because it is also a token issued on the Ontology network.

As of 3:30 p.m. KST on Oct. 11, no post about the halt had appeared in the news section of Ontology's official website. The foundation has not yet explained the cause, the timeline for a restart or any impact on user assets.

A security issue also stopped the chain for two days in late August

The halt comes about 40 days after the Ontology mainnet last stopped. On Aug. 31, the foundation immediately suspended block production after it "identified a potential security concern during our daily security check." At the time, the foundation said there was no confirmed security incident and no indication of any loss or compromise of user assets such as ONT and ONG.

In a Sept. 1 update, the foundation revised its account, saying it had "identified malicious attack activity targeting the network." It said the activity did not involve the security of user assets and did not disclose the method or scale of the attack. The mainnet resumed on Sept. 2, and the foundation asked sync node operators to upgrade their node software to version 3.1.5 as soon as possible.

ONT trades at a 1.3% premium in Korea as trading continues

Trading continued even with transfers blocked. At 3:33 p.m. KST on Oct. 11, ONT traded at 83.6 won on Upbit, down 3.02% from the previous day, with 24-hour trading value of about 2.1 billion won. On Bithumb it traded at 83.14 won. At the same time, ONT was at $0.06153 on Binance, up 1.47% over 24 hours.

Converted into won, the Binance price is about 82.55 won, putting the Upbit price about 1.3% higher. The bitcoin kimchi premium (the gap between prices on Korean exchanges and global markets) was also around 1.3% that day, so ONT's gap was not unusually wide. At the same time on Upbit, ONG traded at 119 won (-2.46%) and MBL at 1.14 won (-1.72%).