A hardware failure in Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) Cloud’s Hong Kong data center caused major service disruption for OKX, with the cryptocurrency exchange failing to process deposits and withdrawals for over 25 hours.
Alibaba Behind OKX’s Transaction Halt
On Sunday, December 18th, at 3am UTC, the Alibaba Cloud Hong Kong IDC Zone C server went offline. As the primary infrastructure provider for OKX, the service disruption affected deposits and withdrawals for the exchange.
On-chain data confirmed that OKX processed no transactions during this timeline, with the last transaction being one million SOS tokens to an unknown wallet address. Some OKX hot wallets were also affected by the downtime.
OKX confirmed the service outage, writing that “our systems experienced a hardware issue with our cloud service provider that interrupted our depositing and withdrawal services.” However, the exchange assured users that funds were safe during the outage.
.tweet-container,.twitter-tweet.twitter-tweet-rendered,blockquote.twitter-tweet{min-height:261px}.tweet-container{position:relative}blockquote.twitter-tweet{display:flex;max-width:550px;margin-top:10px;margin-bottom:10px}blockquote.twitter-tweet p{font:20px -apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,"Segoe UI",Roboto,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif}.tweet-container div:first-child{ position:absolute!Important }.tweet-container div:last-child{ position:relative!Important }
There is currently an intermittent connection error with our cloud provider which is affecting the user experience. Our dev team is resolving it with them. Funds are safe. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.— OKX (@okx) December 18, 2022
OKX Back Online
As Alibaba fixed the issues with its Hong Kong IDC Zone C server, OKX said they were working on the issue and ready to resume withdrawals as soon as the servers were online.
On Monday, December 19th, at 4am UTC, OKX announced that the connection issues with their cloud service provider had been fixed.
On the Flipside
- OKX was not the only exchange to record difficulty in processing transactions, with Gemini and Gate.io suffering transaction downtime over the last few days.
Why You Should Care
With the increasing scrutiny on centralized exchanges, the outage and relationship with a single cloud provider could hurt OKX’s image.
Read about Gemini’s outage in:
Crypto exchange Gemini experiences hours of downtime during scheduled maintenance
Read about Binance’s outflows in:
Binance Outflows Tops $3 Billion, CZ Says the Exchange Will Survive Any Crypto Winter