The outage has renewed calls for decentralized crypto infrastructure. | Credit: Julian Stratenschulte/picture alliance via Getty Images.
Key Takeaways
Binance and KuCoin, two of the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchanges, were temporarily knocked offline on Tuesday following a widespread outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS).
The interruption caused transaction failures across the Binance platform, prompting the exchange to suspend withdrawals briefly. KuCoin also reported service disruptions and told users it was working to restore operations.
Binance confirmed the issue in a post on X, attributing service failures to a “temporary network interruption in the AWS data center.” The exchange said some transactions were still processing successfully but acknowledged that many were failing.
“We are aware of an issue impacting some services on the Binance platform due to a temporary network interruption in the AWS data center,” the exchange wrote. “Some orders are still successful, but some are failing. If users fail, they may keep retrying.”
Roughly 15 minutes after suspending withdrawals, Binance said systems were gradually recovering and that withdrawals had reopened.
“Please note that some services might experience delays while the system fully recovers,” it added. “We will continue to monitor to ensure that all operations run smoothly.”
KuCoin also issued a statement blaming the AWS outage for “temporary disruptions” on its platform. It assured users that their assets remained safe and that recovery updates would follow.
“Our technical team is urgently working on a fix,” the exchange said. “Rest assured that your assets remain secure and all data is intact.”
The incident reignited debate within the crypto community about the overreliance on centralized service providers like AWS. Critics argue that depending on single points of failure runs counter to the industry’s decentralized ethos.
“Why is a platform as massive as Binance still relying on AWS, rather than operating on its own dedicated infrastructure?” one user posted on X .
AWS remains the dominant cloud services provider, widely used for its scalability and reliability. However, it has experienced multiple outages over the years, often impacting crypto platforms and major web services worldwide.
Some decentralized alternatives have emerged in recent years, offering distributed computing networks that claim to reduce downtime risks.
However, adoption has been slow, and centralized providers continue to dominate, especially for platforms requiring high-performance infrastructure.
