Cloudflare Outage Disrupts Global Crypto Trading as Database Error Takes Down 20% of Internet
A catastrophic database failure at Cloudflare, which handles approximately 20% of global internet traffic, triggered a three-hour outage that crippled crypto trading platforms worldwide. The incident began at 11:20 UTC on November 18 when a routine security update to Cloudflare's ClickHouse database spiraled out of control.
The system began generating duplicate entries in a critical configuration file, causing it to swell beyond operational limits. As servers attempted to process the bloated file—which ballooned to contain over 200 features versus the normal 60—they crashed en masse. The cascading failure left traders staring at Error 500 messages across major exchanges during peak trading hours.
Engineers performed emergency surgery on the global network, manually restoring systems by 14:30 UTC with full recovery taking until 17:06 UTC. The outage laid bare the cryptocurrency market's vulnerability to centralized infrastructure failures, with trading volumes plummeting as order books froze across multiple platforms.
