On April 15, major crypto exchanges Binance, KuCoin, and others suffered temporary network interruptions, forcing the platforms to briefly halt withdrawals for users.

On April 15, 2023, significant disruptions in service occurred on major cryptocurrency exchanges such as Binance and KuCoin, leading to a temporary halt in withdrawals. This incident followed a significant outage from Amazon Web Services (AWS), a critical provider of cloud computing services relied upon by numerous businesses globally. Experts suggest that this outage highlights the vulnerabilities present in centralized cloud infrastructures like AWS, particularly the risk of a single point of failure. Dr. Max Li, CEO of OORT, emphasized the growing demand for decentralized and resilient cloud models as a viable solution to mitigate such risks. He pointed out the potential of blockchain technology to distribute data and processing across networks, thus reducing the likelihood of total service disruption. Despite Binance being able to reopen withdrawals in under ten minutes after the network interruption, users still encountered issues with placing trades, indicating that the ripple effects of the outage extended beyond just withdrawals. Jonathan Schemoul, CEO of Aleph Cloud, expressed concerns regarding the behavior of many crypto and Web3 companies that preach decentralization and user privacy while still relying heavily on centralized services like AWS. He criticized these practices, arguing they do not align with the interests of users. This incident raises critical questions about the future of decentralized cloud computing and whether current models can meet the demands of scalability, latency, and coordination. While the need for decentralized systems is more evident than ever, as crypto and Web3 companies continue to navigate the complexities of cloud dependencies, it's crucial that they align their infrastructure choices with their claims of promoting decentralization. The challenge remains in overcoming the substantial barriers posed by costs and existing centralized infrastructures to foster true innovation in the crypto space.