The transaction that caused it to stop was a very unusual one. At best, it was a mistake. There was a good chance it was actually malicious.
The majority of the time, individual bad transactions are filtered out before they enter blocks. This way, they do not impact all the good ones. In this case, it got past the initial filter. Once it was in a block, it is not possible to separate it out.
I know it is not ideal, and obviously the loss of t up-time was a really big deal, but given what happened, the temporary freeze was the best possible outcome.
I appreciate the answers. Does anyone know why this very unusual transaction got past the initial filter? And is there only one filter to go through?
Every type of transaction has filters coded up to prevent invalid transactions of that type. This person found a "creative" case that was not anticipated, and therefore didn't have coding in place to stop.
that it happpened ( the freeze) and was fixed within 3-4 hours speaks volumes. well, to me at least