Coinbase Points to Multi-Zone AWS Failures Behind Outage

Coinbase Points to AWS Failures After Trading Services Went Down

Crypto exchange Coinbase (Nasdaq: COIN) disclosed through Coinbase Support that a May 7 outage disrupted core trading services after failures spread through Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure. Around 8 p.m. ET, Coinbase systems flagged high error rates across multiple services before tracing the disruption to failures tied to an AWS availability zone in the US-EAST-1 Region.

The crypto firm noted its systems were designed to withstand a single-zone outage and recover quickly, but the disruption expanded beyond the exchange’s expected single-zone recovery conditions. Users experienced trading interruptions while AWS teams worked to restore temperature controls and related Amazon Managed Services. Coinbase Support stated in a May 8 post on X:

“We observed failures impacting multiple AWS zones, which caused an extended outage of core trading services.”

The outage followed the crypto exchange’s May 7 first-quarter earnings release, which highlighted record crypto trading volume market share, $202 billion in quarterly trading volume, and annualized retail derivatives revenue above $200 million. The Nasdaq-listed crypto firm also reported $294 billion in assets held on the platform during the quarter.

Earlier updates from Coinbase linked the disruption to increased temperatures in the affected Availability Zone, use1-az4. The company said trading would be re-enabled gradually by first placing all markets into “Cancel Only” mode before restoring full trading access. Coinbase later posted at 3:48 a.m. on May 8 that all markets had been re-enabled for trading on Coinbase Exchange.

Coinbase Continues Review After Trading Service Disruption

After service was restored, the crypto exchange reported the primary issue had been fully resolved. The outage update did not disclose how many users were affected, how long each trading function was unavailable, or which specific services saw the highest error rates during the disruption.

The crypto firm indicated it will conduct a full analysis as additional information becomes available from AWS. Coinbase Support stated:

“Our team will conduct a full analysis. Details may change as our investigation progresses and more information is received from AWS’s official retrospective, once published.”

Further details now depend on Coinbase’s internal review and AWS’s official retrospective. The company cautioned that information may change as the investigation progresses and more findings become available.