For anyone else experiencing this problem, I think I found a possible culprit for some cases:
rsync
rsync is a popular tool used to synchronize files from one location to another. There are many applications that use it behind the scenes.
I was using a newer version (3.2.3) installed via homebrew to synchronize photos between my M1 Mac mini and my NAS. This caused my system to start to slow down, freeze, beach ball, and eventually crash/reboot with a pink screen.
I've filed
a bug report here
And another thread on the
Apple Stack Exchange can be found here
In my case, I just uninstalled the homebrew version, and used the one included in macOS. No more crashing for me. There's a possibility that some applications use a newer version (or one not compiled for M1) that might not be fully compatible with the M1 and might be causing problems. Just a theory.