On November 18 2025, there was a Cloudflare outage. This outage exposed a fundamental paradox in cryptocurrency infrastructure. After all, the outage affected many crypto websites and platforms including InLeo, Publish0x, airdrops.io and the microtasks platform JumpTasks. I am only mentioning the websites that I personally tried during the outage but reports say that many more sites were affected. This event showed us that the industry built on decentralization fundamentally relies on centralized service providers. Why do I say so?
Well, when Cloudflare failed, approximately 20% of all web traffic experienced disruption, taking major crypto platforms down. This undermined the premise of independence and censorship resistant finance that have been sold to people. After all, if Cloudflare outages can affect many crypto platforms, it means they have a level of control over these platforms. And as a result, errors in their systems affect some platforms at any time making the premise of decentralized crypto questionable. Let us dig in and explore this topic!
The event and the scale impact
What happened with Cloudflare on 18 November 2025 was not a state sponsored cyber attack or a quantum hack. Instead it was just a mundane database permission change. Cloudflare’s Bot Management system generated a “feature configuration file” that was too large for the system to handle. This single oversized file caused a serious error.
And this error cascaded across its global network taking out major crypto platforms including Etherscan, Arbiscan, DefiLlama, Kraken, Coinbase and trading infrastructure like BitMEX. Many sites outside crypto were also affected and this disrupted the normal flow of internet traffic. This outage produced widespread 500 internal server errors that rendered the services provided to the platforms non functional. As a result, the services provided by these sites became inaccessible to the users.
You should know that Cloudflare handles roughly 20% of the entire internet’s traffic. If they sneeze, everyone including crypto, catches a cold and this highlights how power is consolidated in a few internet infrastructure holders.
The irony of centralised infrastructure
Cryptocurrencies are marketed as decentralized alternatives to traditional finance. However, most crypto platforms rely on Cloudflare’s centralized content delivery network for security, DDos protection and performance optimization. This dependency on Cloudflare creates a single point of failure that contradicts the core philosophy of blockchain technology. When one company’s database fails, billions of dollars in accessible crypto value becomes temporarily unreachable.
This leaves everyone stuck and millions are lost in potential revenue for crypto platforms. Do you think crypto should remain stuck with Cloudflare or there is a need for new innovation to solve this problem? At least there should be a sort of decentralised infrastructure rails for crypto platforms.
Decentralized blockchain using centralized infrastructure
Cloudflare’s parent company (NET) saw shares drop approximately 3.5% pre market following the announcement of the outage. More significantly, the incident demonstrated how dependent traders and users remain on centralised infrastructure providers.
What this means is that web 3 is actually web 2.5 since it is not fully decentralized. Do you agree? Well, even if you don’t agree, it does not stop this from being a small part of the truth. Take for example, Bitcoin and Ethereum, their nodes are decentralized right? But the nodes visit websites like Uniswap and Coinbase which are hosted on centralized servers like AWS, Azure and Cloudflare. Now, if the Domain Name System or Content Delivery Network on these servers fails, the decentralized backend is not reachable for 99% of the users who do not know how to interact directly with smart contracts via command line.
So in the end, yes the blockchain is decentralised to use, but it depends on centralized infrastructure that provides the frontend. After all, a truly decentralised app is not just about smart contracts, it requires decentralized storage, and decentralized hosting. And this is still in its infancy.
The DePIN movement
The crash of Cloudflare reinvigorated discussions around decentralized infrastructure networks(DePIN). DePIN aims to replace centralized service providers with distributed alternatives. This can be a breath of fresh air for crypto platforms if it works well. After all, the Cloudflare crash highlighted that the current crypto infrastructure layer remains dangerously concentrated among a handful of providers.
Final thoughts and conclusion
The truth is that there is no true decentralization if crypto platforms keep relying on centralized infrastructure for services. True decentralization only comes if every section of the blockchain from actions to infrastructure is decentralised. The current problem is not coming from a weakness in blockchain technology but rather a weakness in the supporting infrastructure ecosystems. What platforms need are multi provider strategies and distributed infrastructure to guarantee uptime. DePIN and similar initiatives represent necessary evolution for the industry.
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References
- Forbes – Cloudflare Outage And How Wall Street Should Respond
https://www.forbes.com/sites/christerholloman/2025/11/18/cloudflare-outage-and-how-wall-street-should-respond/ - Cointelegraph (via ForkLog) – Cloudflare Outage Exposes Web3's Centralization Problem
https://forklog.com/news/cloudflare-outage-exposes-web3s-centralization-problem - FinanceFeeds – Coinbase, BitMEX, Kraken Sites Impacted by Cloudflare Downtime
https://financefeeds.com/coinbase-bitmex-kraken-sites-impacted-by-cloudflare-downtime/ - Brave New Coin – Database Error Takes Down 20% of Internet: Cloudflare Outage Disrupts Global Crypto Trading
https://bravenewcoin.com/insights/database-error-takes-down-20-of-internet-cloudflare-outage-disrupts-global-crypto-trading - TradingView – Cloudflare outage shows why crypto needs end-to-end decentralization
https://www.tradingview.com/news/cointelegraph:a43c75739094b:0-cloudflare-outage-shows-why-crypto-needs-end-to-end-decentralization/
