Bitcoin has also had one major outage which needed manual intervention from the miners - https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0050.mediawiki
Bitcoin used to have a centralized alert system, where urgent messages could be broadcast over the Bitcoin network by anyone having the private keys for the alert system. This alert system has later been removed from the Bitcoin Core client. I think maybe it would make sense to set up some alert system where any of the top 20 active witnesses could send an alert. I don't believe false alerts would be a big problem, since such an alert message (hopefully) would cause the witness to lose votes.
Thanks for the feedback. I don't think witness responsiveness has ever been, or was in this case, an issue but it certainly might be worth considering. It's important to remember that any time that is spent developing one solution is time not spent developing another. As Steve Jobs famously said, "People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are."
I wish the success of the platform! Hoping you release more youtube videos Andrew; you're a great spokesman.
Yes. @andrarchy
Why not create a video explaining how this problem was fixed?
Thanks! I'll work on it!
True. The alert-system is probably not worth pursuing - but I do believe it's rather important that nodes stays up and serves read-only-requests even if the block production is halted.
Many witnesses have alarms set up if they have missed blocks.