On April 21, Polkadot parachains experienced a temporary halt in block production following the activation of the network's runtime upgrade on its mainnet. Moonbeam, an Ethereum-compatible smart contract parachain, confirmed the incident, revealing that its block production ceased for about an hour.

Dustin Lee, co-founder of Polkadot-based marketplace DeStore Network, attributed the issue to the deployment of the runtime 1.2 upgrade. Bill Laboon, Director of Education and Governance Initiatives at Web3 Foundation, developers of Polkadot, noted that the upgrade also affected certain wallets and interfaces, albeit only causing user interface issues.

Laboon assured users that these problems were solely UI-related and did not affect staking itself, requiring no action from users. These developments occurred shortly after Polkadot founder Gavin Wood introduced the JAM upgrade proposal, aimed at revamping the Relay Chain with a more modular design while introducing a decentralized hybrid system combining Ethereum's smart contract capabilities with Polkadot's architectural framework.

Despite these challenges, Polkadot's native DOT token remained largely unaffected, maintaining its position as one of the top-performing digital assets in the last 24 hours, with a roughly 5% increase in value, reaching as high as $7.56. This performance underscores the growing interest in Polkadot, particularly as institutional investors reportedly shift funds towards its ecosystem, as noted by CryptoSlate.