An extensive AWS (Amazon Web Services) outage earlier today caused widespread internet disruptions, hitting several major platforms—including Coinbase. The crypto exchange’s premium trading platform, Coinbase Advanced, faced intermittent connectivity issues for more than two hours. Although Coinbase’s status page suggests services have stabilized, core functions remain affected, and engineers have yet to declare the issue fully resolved.
The AWS disruption exposed Coinbase’s reliance on centralized infrastructure. While the company has promoted Base, its Layer 2 blockchain, as a step toward decentralization, these outages underscore the vulnerabilities tied to depending heavily on a single cloud provider. The incident reignited discussions within the crypto community about the importance of decentralized systems and server distribution across multiple regions and providers.
Since the outage began, all major non-stablecoin tokens on Base have dropped in value, with Synthetix recording the steepest decline at around 3.5% in the last hour. Fortunately, no Base tokens have suffered major crashes, but the event has shaken investor confidence and drawn attention to Coinbase’s centralization strategy.
Competitors such as Binance and Kraken, which appear unaffected by AWS’s downtime, have continued operations smoothly, amplifying the contrast between centralized and diversified infrastructures. The situation serves as a reminder that, despite Coinbase’s innovation in the blockchain space, its technical framework still mirrors traditional, centralized systems that the crypto industry seeks to move beyond.
To prevent similar setbacks, Coinbase may need to decentralize its infrastructure and adopt multi-cloud or blockchain-based hosting solutions. Doing so would not only enhance platform reliability but also align with the broader ethos of decentralization that defines the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
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