Cloudflare Outage Disrupts 20% of the Internet, Hits Crypto Platforms Hard
A global internet disruption erupted after a critical glitch inside Cloudflare’s bot defense system caused a cascade failure, temporarily shutting down access to nearly 20% of all webpages. The outage impacted leading crypto platforms and even major online services like X (formerly Twitter) and ChatGPT, exposing how deeply the internet depends on Cloudflare’s infrastructure.
According to a post-mortem statement released Tuesday, the problem began when a “feature file” in Cloudflare’s Bot Management software ballooned far beyond its normal operating size. This unexpected overflow caused the software to malfunction, crashing large portions of Cloudflare’s service.
“Given Cloudflare’s importance in the Internet ecosystem, any outage of any of our systems is unacceptable,” the company said, apologizing for the disruption.
Although many initially suspected a large-scale cyberattack or DDoS assault, Cloudflare confirmed that no malicious activity was involved.
Crypto Industry Hit Hard as Cloudflare Outage Sparks Centralization Debate
Cloudflare powers roughly 20% of internet traffic and supports nearly one-third of the world’s top websites and apps. So when the Cloudflare outage struck, it rippled across the digital economy, taking offline major crypto and blockchain services including:
The incident reignited long-standing concerns about the crypto sector’s dependence on centralized infrastructure — especially after Amazon Web Services (AWS) experienced its own crash just a month earlier.
EthStorage, a company focused on decentralized hosting via Ethereum, told Cointelegraph that reliance on centralized providers like AWS and Cloudflare creates unavoidable vulnerability:
“Centralized infrastructure will always create single points of failure. A complete decentralized web stack is needed more than ever.”
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Cloudflare Outage Reignites Vitalik Buterin’s Push for Trustless Infrastructure
The disruption landed just days after Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, published his “Trustless Manifesto,” warning developers not to compromise decentralization in exchange for convenience or growth.
Buterin argued that the moment a crypto platform integrates even one centralized component — such as a hosted node or off-chain relayer — it gives up a layer of trustlessness. Over time, he warned, each “small compromise” becomes a potential choke point capable of collapsing an entire system.
His message now reads like a warning fulfilled.
The Cloudflare Outage Wasn’t Just a Glitch — It Was a Wake-Up Call
The outage highlights a growing contradiction in the crypto world: an industry built to eliminate centralized control still depends heavily on centralized companies for web access. As outages grow more frequent globally, the call for a fully decentralized internet is becoming less philosophical — and more urgent.
