Zero-knowledge apps go dark after chain upgrade breaks their underlying verification keys

The Mina Mesa upgrade stopped transaction processing for about eight hours on September 3 as the layer-1 blockchain shifted mainnet to its Mesa release. Exchanges suspended MINA transfers, while deployed zkApps now need new verification keys before they can resume proof-authorized activity.The process split into five hours when blocks continued without transactions and roughly three hours when the network produced no blocks. Mina reached its 10:00 UTC transaction cutoff, and upgraded block producers made empty blocks for 100 slots before block production halted at 15:00 UTC.The official upgrade runbook now marks those milestones as completed. It also records the Mesa package release at 16:30 UTC and the first Mesa slot at 18:00 UTC as completed. Archive-node and manual node upgrades remained in progress this morning.Mina instructed exchanges to disable MINA deposits and withdrawals from the 10:00 UTC stop-transaction slot until the Mesa network became operational. The first Mesa slot has since completed, although each exchange controls when its transfer support resumes.Mina Mesa upgrade cuts slot timesThe Mina Mesa upgrade also changes the network’s operating cadence. According to ...