By
Anisha Pandey
May 31st, 2024
The lack of a definitive explanation for the downtime led to speculation that it could have been due to server maintenance or system overload.
Coinbase, a popular cryptocurrency exchange based in the United States, has successfully restored its system back online after four long hours that seemed like an eternity to users. On May 14, Coinbase announced that it was hit by a major system outage that impacted its performance on both desktop and mobile devices.
In a social media post shared on X, the company described the incident as a “system-wide outage”, which resulted in the temporary unavailability of its services. The outage commenced at approximately 4:15 am UTC on Tuesday. However, after hours of locking users out of their accounts, the company’s support team announced on X that the services had been fully restored.
Coinbase is now fully recovered. We appreciate your patience and apologize for the inconvenience. https://t.co/AAzEMPaJGL
— Coinbase Support (@CoinbaseSupport) May 14, 2024
Coinbase Yet to Disclose Cause of System Outage
Initially, users attempting to visit the Coinbase website on desktop and mobile devices received a “503 Service Temporarily Unavailable” error message.
While the company informed users about the “system-wide outage”, it did not include details of the exact cause of the downtime. Its support team took to X to notify users that the company had been unable to pinpoint the exact cause of the blackout while assuring users that their funds were safe.
The lack of a definitive explanation for the downtime led to speculation that it could have been due to server maintenance or system overload. According to a developer guide from Mozilla, overloading is one of the most common causes of such disruptions, which could have contributed to Coinbase issues.
Despite restoring the service back online, Coinbase has not disclosed the specific cause of the outage, leaving users and industry observers to speculate about the incident.
Not the First
Coinbase’s recent four-hour system outage is not an isolated incident for the publicly traded US-based company. Earlier this year, Coinbase was among several crypto exchanges that faced temporary blackouts in February. The outages were triggered by a sudden surge in crypto trading activity during a Bitcoin (BTC) flash crash, which caused the asset’s price to plummet nearly 10% before recovering.
Coinbase also encountered another issue in March when some users reported difficulty accessing their accounts. The temporary glitch affected users’ ability to use the platform, with some traders even seeing a zero balance on their Coinbase accounts during the incident.
While outages can be frustrating for users of crypto exchanges, the experience is not limited to centralized platforms. Yesterday, Coinspeaker reported that Degen Chain, a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, suffered a system outage that lasted more than 12 hours.
The outage led to temporal restriction of users’ access to other blockchain projects including bridges associated with the chain.
Last month, another blockchain protocol, Shibarium, a layer-2 network developed for the Shiba Inu ecosystem, suffered a system outage that affected the performance of SHIB.