Coinbase suffered a prolonged outage on Sunday, with the exchange blaming a multi-zone failure at Amazon Web Services for disrupting crypto trading and transfers. The downtime lasted several hours, leaving users unable to check balances, place orders, or move funds.
What went wrong at AWS
The problem originated in AWS's infrastructure across multiple availability zones — the isolated data centers that cloud providers use to prevent a single point of failure. When those zones went down in tandem, Coinbase lost access to critical backend services. The exchange said its engineering team worked with AWS to restore connectivity, but did not specify which regions were affected or how long the full recovery took.
User experience during the blackout
For much of the day, Coinbase displayed error messages on its website and mobile app. Some users reported seeing blank screens or failed transaction attempts. Social media lit up with complaints, though the exchange gave periodic updates via its status page. It wasn't until late Sunday afternoon that Coinbase declared the incident resolved.
Not the first cloud-related headache
Crypto exchanges have long been vulnerable to AWS outages. Binance, Kraken, and even Coinbase itself have all been tripped up by Amazon's cloud hiccups in the past. This time, the hit came at a relatively quiet moment in markets, but the timing still stings: Coinbase has been pushing new features to attract institutional clients, and a multi-hour blackout isn't a great look.
Coinbase said it will release a post-mortem in the coming days detailing the root cause and the steps it plans to take to prevent a repeat. Investors and users will be watching closely — especially after the exchange's last post-incident report promised improved redundancy.
