Hedera [HBAR] becomes the latest victim of network downtime

• An unknown technical glitch sends Hedera to a grinding halt.
• HBAR bears turbocharging their assault as the dices fall in their favor.

Hedera network users and developers experienced a rough time on Thursday (9 March) due to network downtime. This is the first time that the network has experienced such an event. Nonetheless, it joins the likes of the Solana network which has experienced numerous such incidents in the past including a recent event.

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Hedera developers initially reported that smart contract irregularities triggered the network disruption. The event rendered many users unable to access the network’s services.

After extensive investigations, developers found that the root cause was attackers trying to exploit Hedera’s smart contract service code. The dev team was forced to shut down network proxies on the mainnet as part of its precautionary measures aimed at protecting users.

Today, attackers exploited the Smart Contract Service code of the Hedera mainnet to transfer Hedera Token Service tokens held by victims’ accounts to their own account. (1/6)

— Hedera (@hedera) March 10, 2023

Aside from users being unable to access the network, Hedera DApps and services were also affected.  Developers paused the Hashport bridge which was the conduit that the attackers used to move stolen tokens. Disabling the Hashport bridge allowed the team to stop the exploit.

The impact on investor sentiment

Network downtimes usually have a negative impact on investor sentiment. They can potentially trigger an erosion of the faith that investors have in the network.

It is rather difficult to gauge the impact of the network downtime on Hedera’s native cryptocurrency HBAR because it was already bearish before the incident.

HBAR’s weighted sentiment metric kicked off the week with some downside, confirming an overall bearish expectation.

Despite this, the same metric registered a bit of an upside suggesting that some investors expect a pivot after the extended retracement.

Source: Santiment

Hedera’s volume metric registered a surge in the last 24 hours. Contrary to investor sentiments, the volume represents the increase in sell pressure as a result of more FUD in the market.

HBAR tanked by more than 8% in the last 24 hours, thus extending its retracement to 43% from its YTD highs. It exchanged hands at $0.055 at press time, and the last time it traded within this level was in the third week of January.

Source: TradingView

How many are 1,10,100 HBARs worth today?

Hedera’s weighted sentiment is bound to lean towards bullish expectations as has been the case in the last two days. The key reason is HBAR’s oversold nature after a robust pullback.

The MFI indicates that outflows have leveled out. The price may still continue tanking if market conditions remain unfavorable.