Breaking News: Ethereum API service provider experiencing issues, potentially causing withdrawal problems on exchanges
Wallet providers and exchanges were reported to have experienced abnormalities, which may be related to the interruption of the Ethereum API infrastructure service Infura. Update: System has been restored after 6 p.m. on the 11th, and exchanges have resumed normal withdrawals.
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Wallet Providers and Exchanges Report Unusual Issues
This afternoon, the cryptocurrency community reported that several exchanges such as Binance, Huobi, Upbit, Bithumb, etc., have allegedly suspended ETH and ERC20 token deposit and withdrawal services. Issues such as abnormal balance display on the Ethereum wallet MetaMask, data delays, and abnormal Gas Price estimates have been observed.
The Block's Research Director, Larry Cermak, recently stated that this situation is related to a disruption in service by Ethereum infrastructure provider Infura:
"Infura seems to be down, causing significant delays in price feeds, resulting in delays in ETH and ERC-20 deposit and withdrawal functions for some exchanges. MetaMask is also experiencing issues. This may impact certain DeFi-related things."
It seems like Infura is having an outage which is causing some pretty big delay in price feeds and some exchanges are also delaying withdrawals of ETH and ERC-20's. Metamask also having issues. There could also be an effect on some DeFi stuff
— Larry Cermak 🫡 (@lawmaster) November 11, 2020
The Infura official page also indicates a severe service interruption in its API.
At the time of writing, exchanges have not issued formal announcements regarding the suspension of deposit and withdrawal services. However, Bitfinex and Tether's CTO Paolo Ardoino also commented on the incident, stating that exchanges should run their own Ethereum nodes to avoid similar issues.
Exchanges should run their own Ethereum nodes. https://t.co/l6SCqm7RlQ
— Paolo Ardoino (@paoloardoino) November 11, 2020
Ethereum API Infrastructure Infura
Infura, developed by Michael Wuehler and acquired by Consensys, is an infrastructure that allows off-chain systems to interact with the Ethereum blockchain without running a full node. Popular decentralized applications or protocols, such as the Ethereum wallet MetaMask or decentralized exchange protocol 0x, rely on Infura to broadcast transaction data and smart contracts to the Ethereum mainnet, with Infura handling nearly 13 billion requests daily.
Ethereum and IPFS API service provider Infura stated that its Ethereum mainnet API is experiencing service interruptions, and the on-duty team is investigating and working to restore service functionality. The latest repair progress can be viewed on thepage.