A major outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) briefly brought trading to a halt for several major cryptocurrency exchanges, including Binance, KuCoin, and MEXC, spotlighting a critical chokepoint in crypto’s infrastructure.
The disruption began with what AWS called “connectivity issues” affecting over a dozen of its services. Within hours, multiple centralized exchanges relying on AWS for cloud infrastructure reported technical problems ranging from failed orders to delayed asset transfers.
“We are aware of an issue impacting some services on the Binance platform due to a temporary network interruption,” Binance posted on X, noting partial recovery of order functionality.
The exchange later confirmed that user withdrawals had resumed after AWS technical support intervened.
Other platforms didn’t fare better. KuCoin reported “temporary disruptions,” while MEXC warned users of inaccurate charts, failed order cancellations and delayed transfers. Despite the technical hiccups, MEXC assured that customer assets remained safe.
The list of affected platforms grew throughout the day to include Coinstore, Gate.io, DeBank, Rabby Wallet, and Weex—underscoring how deeply reliant the centralized crypto ecosystem is on AWS’s cloud infrastructure, known for handling high-throughput, low-latency transactions.
Exchanges’ AWS Outage Triggers Calls for Decentralization
AWS powers not only trading engines but also wallet operations and backend systems for exchanges like Coinbase, Crypto.com, Kraken, and Huobi, it’s worth noting.
Edmund Chua, head of the mETH Protocol, summed up the frustration on the microblogging platform: “AWS down and 90% of crypto is down. Decentralization is a meme.”
AWS down and 90% of crypto is down
Decentralization is a meme
— Defi_Maestro ✺ (@Defi_Maestro) April 15, 2025
The incident renewed calls for alternative, decentralized infrastructure solutions. Bitget CEO Gracy Chen called it “a solid reminder” that the industry should explore services like Filecoin for storage, Akash Network for decentralized computing, and Render Network for GPU processing.
The renewed calls for growing decentralization come as the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem keeps on growing, with some decentralized exchanges, including Hyperliquid and dYdX, seeing massive trading volumes already.
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