Cloudflare stated it identified the problem and began implementing a fix, though customers continued experiencing higher error rates during remediation efforts.
Crypto News
Cloudflare suffered a network outage on Tuesday that disrupted access to major cryptocurrency platforms including Coinbase, Kraken and Etherscan. The incident affected exchanges, blockchain explorers, DeFi protocols, and analytics services as users encountered "500 Internal Server Error" pages across multiple sites.
The network infrastructure provider acknowledged the issue at approximately 11:48 a.m. UTC, describing it as an internal service degradation affecting parts of its global network. Cloudflare stated it identified the problem and began implementing a fix, though customers continued experiencing higher error rates during remediation efforts.
Bitcoin and Ethereum trading platforms were among the hardest hit. Lending protocol Aave, data provider DeFiLlama, and multiple blockchain explorers experienced intermittent service disruptions. The outage extended beyond crypto, impacting major Web2 sites including X.
Cloudflare shares dropped 3.5% in pre-market trading following the announcement. The company had scheduled maintenance at several data centers but has not confirmed whether these events were connected to the outage.
The incident marks the third major Cloudflare disruption affecting crypto platforms since 2019. Previous outages in June 2022 and July 2019 similarly knocked Coinbase and other major services offline, highlighting the industry's reliance on centralized infrastructure providers.
Amazon Web Services caused similar problems in October when an outage temporarily displayed zero balances for some users on Coinbase's Base App, MetaMask, and other platforms. Last year, a faulty CrowdStrike software update crashed millions of Windows computers, affecting some crypto front-ends though underlying blockchain protocols remained unaffected.
David Schwed, COO of SovereignAI, noted that recent outages from Cloudflare and AWS demonstrate organizations cannot rely on single vendors for infrastructure resiliency. He stated that businesses requiring constant uptime must build systems assuming these disruptions will occur, calling reliance on vendor restoration pure negligence.
Platforms like Kraken reported implementing fixes and restoring access before many other affected services. BlueSky and Reddit appeared unaffected by the disruption. Cloudflare later stated it believed the incident was resolved but continued monitoring for errors to ensure all services returned to normal operation.
Despite decentralization efforts across crypto and blockchain platforms, most remain dependent on centralized infrastructure services like Cloudflare and AWS for front-end operations and user access.
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