TLDR
- Amazon AWS experienced a major outage on October 20-21, 2025, affecting its Virginia data center and causing widespread internet disruptions
- Major crypto platforms including Coinbase, Base layer-2 network, Infura, and Robinhood went offline during the outage
- The incident revealed crypto’s dependence on centralized cloud infrastructure despite industry claims of decentralization
- Layer-2 networks like Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, Linea, Scroll, and Base were affected, while layer-1 blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum continued operating
- The outage highlights how three companies—Amazon, Microsoft, and Google—control most internet infrastructure, creating single points of failure
Amazon Web Services suffered a day-long outage starting October 20, 2025, that exposed serious problems in both the internet and crypto industries. The disruption originated at Amazon’s US-EAST-1 data center in Virginia.
The outage affected millions of users worldwide. Amazon identified the cause as problems with its domain name system and DynamoDB database service.
If your blockchain is down because of the AWS outage, you’re not sufficiently decentralized.
— Ben Schiller (@btschiller) October 20, 2025
The domain name system converts website addresses into numerical IP addresses that computers use. DynamoDB is Amazon’s database service that stores and retrieves data for applications.
These problems created a cascade of failures across the internet. Websites and services remained offline throughout most of the workday.
The crypto industry faced particular embarrassment during the outage. Many platforms that claim to be decentralized went completely offline.
Crypto Platforms Go Dark
Coinbase reported that both its trading platform and Base layer-2 network stopped working. Robinhood and ConsenSys’ Infura also experienced service disruptions.
Infura provides backend infrastructure that helps wallets and apps connect to blockchains. The company reported that Ethereum Mainnet, Polygon, Optimism, Arbitrum, Linea, Base, and Scroll were all affected.
The crypto community quickly criticized the affected platforms. Ben Schiller from Miden stated on X that blockchains down due to AWS outages are not sufficiently decentralized.
Maggie Love from SheFi echoed this concern. She pointed out that inability to connect to Ethereum mainnet during AWS outages proves the system is not truly decentralized.
This was not the first time AWS problems disrupted crypto services. A similar outage occurred in April 2025 that knocked crypto exchanges and infrastructure providers offline.
Layer-2 networks faced particular scrutiny after the outage. These systems are designed to improve blockchain scalability and reduce costs.
The Decentralization Paradox
However, many layer-2 networks still depend on centralized cloud services for their front-ends and API layers. Even though their consensus layers remained intact, users could not access them during the outage.
Jay Jog from Sei Labs argued that the incident proves the value of layer-1 blockchains. He noted that Base going down with AWS demonstrates why EVM layer-1 networks matter.
Major layer-1 blockchains like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana continued operating normally during the outage. These networks use globally distributed validator sets and independent node operators.
Chris Jenkins from Pocket Network said the outage reminds everyone that blockchain is only as decentralized as its infrastructure. He noted that the internet itself faces the same problem.
The current internet infrastructure depends on just three major cloud providers. Amazon, Microsoft, and Google dominate the market and control most online services.
Large companies can afford to use multiple cloud providers as backup. Smaller companies typically cannot afford this redundancy and remain vulnerable to single-provider outages.
The April 2025 AWS outage prompted similar warnings about centralization. Six months later, the October outage showed that little had changed in the industry.
