Coinbase Redoing Infrastructure to Prevent Outages During Peak Times

The exchange is also working to improve its customer service response time, another source of complaints.

AccessTimeIconJan 17, 2021 at 6:42 p.m. UTC
Updated Aug 19, 2021 at 6:40 a.m. UTC

Presented By Icon

Election 2024 coverage presented by

Stand with crypto

Coinbase will break apart certain parts of its Coinbase.com and app infrastructure in a bid to keep the cryptocurrency exchange from going down during periods of high volume.

During the recent bitcoin bull run, Coinbase has struggled to keep itself up during stretches of heavy volume, leading to snarky comments on Twitter and Reddit that it’s only news when the exchange doesn't go down during peak periods. Given the exchange has filed preliminary documents for a public listing of the company’s shares, fixing its infrastructure has undoubtedly taken on an even greater urgency. 

  • Bitcoin Mining in the U.S. Will Become 'a Lot More Decentralized': Core Scientific CEO
    13:18
    Bitcoin Mining in the U.S. Will Become 'a Lot More Decentralized': Core Scientific CEO
  • Binance to Discontinue Its Nigerian Naira Services After Government Scrutiny
    05:10
    Binance to Discontinue Its Nigerian Naira Services After Government Scrutiny
  • The first video of the year 2024
    04:07
    The first video of the year 2024
  • The last regression video of the year 3.67.0
    40:07
    The last regression video of the year 3.67.0
  • According to an updated Jan. 8 post mortem on the Jan. 6-7 outages, Coinbase said it will break its “monolithic” backend into “discrete” parts in order to limit individual parts breaking and taking down the whole system. 

    “We are further decomposing our monolithic application server into separate discrete services. This will allow us to have different scaling profiles for different sections of our API surface that receive heterogeneous load,” the exchange said in the blog. “In addition, this will reduce the blast radius if we have issues in any one surface, as it will only affect the APIs or functionality that it is responsible for.”

    Coinbase specifically cited record-breaking exchange volumes on Jan. 7 that were “easily 6x what had already been an elevated steady-state request rate.”

    The exchange said trading and buying was still available during this period, but other dependencies related to the function limited the apps functionality.

    In another blog, Coinbase’s customer service desk apologized for “delays in response time,” another source of frequent complaint on the internet. The exchange committed to hiring more team members, rolling out a chat feature with customer support along with being more vocal on major social media accounts.

    The two blogs follow a Jan. 12 post apologizing to U.K. and European Union customers for system outages and trading restrictions.

    Disclosure

    Please note that our privacy policy, terms of use, cookies, and do not sell my personal information have been updated.

    CoinDesk is an award-winning media outlet that covers the cryptocurrency industry. Its journalists abide by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk has adopted a set of principles aimed at ensuring the integrity, editorial independence and freedom from bias of its publications. CoinDesk is part of the Bullish group, which owns and invests in digital asset businesses and digital assets. CoinDesk employees, including journalists, may receive Bullish group equity-based compensation. Bullish was incubated by technology investor Block.one.


    Learn more about Consensus 2024, CoinDesk's longest-running and most influential event that brings together all sides of crypto, blockchain and Web3. Head to consensus.coindesk.com to register and buy your pass now.



    Read more about