By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 26th, 2024
An AWS outage shut down several apps and disrupted services, but did not disturb Ethereum despite hosting more than 64% of nodes.
Although Amazon Web Services (AWS) had a minor outage on Tuesday, where it was temporarily unavailable, Ethereum remained unaffected. The temporary downtime did not affect Ethereum’s network nodes, which are mostly hosted on AWS.
AWS first revealed at 12:08 PDT that it started an investigation into increased error rates and latencies it had noticed. The company then provided 10 more status updates, with the last one confirming that its struggles lasted from 11:49 AM PDT to 3:37 PM PDT.
The final update provides extensive details, stating that multiple AWS Services experienced the problem in the US. According to AWS, the outage caused problems for customers directly through API Gateway, and indirectly through other AWS services. The update also specified that customer issues experienced at the time include sign-in or authentication errors with the AWS Management Console or the Cognito service. Furthermore, customers may have had problems contacting AWS Support via chat or call.
By 1:41 PM, AWS had resolved the issue and began processing a backlog of accumulated requests. At 3:37 PM, AWS finished processing the backlog and confirmed that all processes were working properly.
AWS Outage Did Not Affect Ethereum
Ethereum proponent Evan Van Ness posted the AWS downtime on Twitter, confirming that “Ethereum is humming along unaffected.” While the downtime affected the Associated Press and a few other mainstream news organizations, not all services reliant on AWS suffered a downtime. The AWS update specified that the problem affected services in the “US-EAST-1-Region.”
According to Ethernodes information, Amazon hosts 64.4% of Ethereum nodes, with Google Cloud at only 5.2%. Nevertheless, the outage was likely not strong enough to affect Ethereum since only one AWS region was affected.
The recent outage may resume talks about Ethereum’s centralization. Enthusiasts have chided Ethereum for its relationship with Infura’s infrastructure, responsible for network nodes used by organizations. More than a few organizations mostly use AWS for hosting.
More on the Outage
Several other companies were affected by the downtime. While it might be impossible to specify the number of organizations that use AWS or were recently affected, reports state that major fast-food companies had to suspend some services. According to a TheVerge report, Burger King, McDonald’s, and Taco Bell had to pause app orders until the problem was resolved.
In addition to the fast food companies, Hacker News and Reddit engineers also complained that troubleshooting consoles were unavailable. Reportedly, Delta Air Lines was also affected.
A 2021 AWS outage had more severe effects than the recent downtime. The problem reportedly affected several services, including access to Amazon.com, Amazon Music, and Alexa. Security cameras, including Wyze and Ring, also recorded downtime. Furthermore, the list extended to streaming services like Netflix and Disney Plus, with reports from Venmo, Cash App, Coinbase, and Tinder.