Top crypto trading platforms Coinbase and Robinhood went offline for hours Monday, with the companies citing an Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage as the cause of the mayhem.
Users across the world panicked as their crypto funds became—at least temporarily—inaccessible. Users of both apps reported an inability not only to buy or sell tokens on Monday, but even to log into their accounts.
Companies like Coinbase and Robinhood depend on AWS, Amazon’s cloud computing provider, to host their sites.
During the outage, the apps were totally unusable in many cases. AWS is so widely depended on for internet infrastructure that today’s events also caused flight delays, banking issues in the UK, and a Snapchat blackout.
Crypto users were particularly incensed about the failures, however, given the emphasis of companies like Coinbase on decentralization and the efficiencies of the crypto payments system in contrast to traditional financial services. Users also reported that Coinbase’s Base app was non-functional during the outage.
In response to the reaction this morning from disgruntled customers, Coinbase said Monday that it is actively working on “reorganizing services” to prevent similar future outages.
The outages underscore the dependence of even decentralization-touting crypto companies on a handful of hyper-centralized internet infrastructure providers. Most of today’s internet, including popular crypto sites, could not operate without tools built by megacorporations like Amazon.
“The AWS outage isn’t an isolated event—it’s a consequence of how the modern internet is built and the incentive models that have been constructed,” Sam Mason de Caires, director of engineering at Syndicate, a company working to build a decentralized internet on Ethereum, told Decrypt.
“We’ve concentrated control into a handful of centralized coordination layers that determine how data moves, how applications run, and ultimately, whether they stay online,” de Caires continued.
Later Monday morning, AWS announced in a statement that its internal failures had been “fully mitigated”, though the company noted some service may be throttled as it works towards “full resolution.”
About two hours later, Robinhood said its service interruption had been resolved. Coinbase said its services “are continuing to recover.”
Editor’s note: This story was updated after publication with additional details.
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