cosmos-sdk/docs/spec/circuit-breaker

Concepts

The intention of the circuit breaker is to have a contingency plan for a running network which maintains network liveness. This can be achieved through selectively "pausing" functionality of specific modules on a running network. The circuit breaker is intended to be enabled through either:

• governance
• for emergencies a special subset of accounts selected by the state machine
• a transaction which proves the expected behaviour is broken

Pause state

The basic pause state of any module simply disables all message routes to that module. Beyond that, it may be a appropriate for different modules to process begin-block/end-block in an altered "safe" way.