Cloudflare global network outage hits multiple crypto front-ends in widespread disruption

Cloudflare suffered a global network outage on Tuesday that has impacted the front-ends of multiple crypto platforms, including exchanges, block explorers, DeFi protocols, and analytics services.

Cloudflare provides global network infrastructure that powers security, traffic routing, and edge computing services used by millions of websites and applications.

Coinbase and Kraken are among the crypto exchanges impacted by the issue, with blockchain explorer Etherscan, lending platform Aave, and data provider DeFiLlama all experiencing intermittent Cloudflare "500 Internal Server Error" pages. The issue is also impacting major Web2 sites, including Elon Musk's X.

Cloudflare first acknowledged the issue on its status page at around 11:48 a.m. UTC, describing it as an "internal service degradation" affecting parts of its global network. The company later said the issue has been identified and that a fix is being implemented.

The outage comes amid scheduled maintenance at several Cloudflare data centers, although the firm has not confirmed whether the two events are connected and has yet to provide further details on the root cause.

"We are seeing services recover, but customers may continue to observe higher-than-normal error rates as we continue remediation efforts," it said. "We are continuing to work towards restoring other services."

Cloudflare shares are down 3.5% in pre-market trading on Tuesday following the news.

Not the first time

This is not the first time that a Cloudflare outage has had knock-on effects in the crypto space. In June 2022, widespread network issues also brought several crypto exchanges to a halt, echoing a July 2019 Cloudflare outage that knocked Coinbase, CoinMarketCap, and several major websites offline.

Crypto sites have also encountered issues from cloud infrastructure providers such as AWS and Microsoft in recent years, underscoring the global reliance of platforms on a relatively small set of services.

In October, Coinbase's Base App said users may see zero balances for some coins in the wake of an Amazon Web Services outage, which also created issues for users of MetaMask and Coinbase, among other platforms.

Last year, businesses around the world faced massive disruption after a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike caused millions of Windows-based computers and IT endpoints that downloaded the update to crash. While some crypto front-ends were also impacted in that case, it's important to note that such issues don't affect underlying blockchain protocols.

"With Cloudflare down today and AWS just a few weeks ago, it's evident we can't simply outsource resiliency in our infrastructure to a single vendor," SovereignAI COO David Schwed told The Block. "If your organization needs to be up 24/7, you have to build your infrastructure assuming these outages will happen. A business continuity plan comprised of 'wait for vendor to restore' is pure negligence."