Coinbase's Base App Clarifies Zero Balances After AWS Outage Sparks Global Crypto App Disruptions: Is Crypto Really Decentralised?

Coinbase’s Base App Faces Display Confusion Amid AWS Outage Ripple Effects

As the internet reeled from a widespread Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage on Monday, the disruption rippled deep into the crypto world—impacting exchanges, wallets, and decentralised networks alike.

Coinbase’s Base App, still in beta, became one of the latest to address user concerns after account balances began displaying unexpected changes.

Why Some Base Users Saw Balance Changes

In a post on X, Base clarified that no user funds were lost.

Instead, the change stemmed from a technical adjustment in how the app displays coin values.

Base explained,

“Before today, coins with no trades showed a value, even though that value wasn’t claimable. Now, if a coin hasn’t been traded yet, it’ll show as 0 until someone buys or sells it so your portfolio reflects real market value.”

The update, while cosmetic, arrived at a tense time for crypto users already experiencing issues across platforms.

Earlier that day, AWS confirmed that the problem causing the “mConass” outage had been “fully mitigated,” but its effects continued to ripple through blockchain-linked services.

AWS Outage Disrupted Millions Around The Globe

The outage originated from AWS’s northern Virginia cluster, affecting the Domain Name System (DNS) that routes requests to the company’s DynamoDB cloud database.

The problem stemmed from an internal network subsystem that monitors the health of AWS’s load balancers, part of its EC2 Elastic Compute Cloud service.

While AWS reported that “all services returned to normal operations” by Monday afternoon, some services still had backlogs that required hours to clear.

The disruption knocked millions offline globally, affecting apps like Snapchat, Reddit, Venmo, and Zoom, as well as banks, airlines, and other essential services, illustrating the fragility of reliance on a single cloud provider.

Crypto Platforms Struggle To Stay Online

Coinbase, OpenSea, and MetaMask were among the hardest hit.

Many users across the United States, particularly on the East Coast, found themselves unable to log in, trade, or view account balances.

Even decentralised wallets like MetaMask temporarily displayed zero balances, as Infura—the key infrastructure provider that connects wallets to blockchains—was also affected by the AWS disruption.

Infura’s outages caused difficulties in fetching blockchain data from major networks including Ethereum, Base, Polygon, Optimism, Arbitrum, Linea, and Scroll.

The situation highlighted just how dependent the broader crypto ecosystem remains on a handful of cloud service providers.

Base Network’s Recovery Hits Snags

Coinbase’s Base network, a popular Ethereum Layer-2 solution, also suffered limited capacity hours after AWS first went down.

While the network’s status page initially reported that issues had been resolved, it later flagged fresh problems involving transaction delays and inconsistent block production.

Coinbase acknowledged the persistence of these issues, confirming that users were still “unable to use many core functions of Coinbase,” including trading and transfers.

Although other platforms such as Robinhood managed to restore service more quickly, Coinbase continued to grapple with the AWS fallout throughout the day.

NFT Marketplaces Caught In The Chaos

The NFT sector wasn’t spared either.

OpenSea’s Chief Technology Officer, Chris Maddern, confirmed that while the marketplace itself remained operational, many “upstream providers” were still facing “major issues,” resulting in intermittent downtime and a higher-than-normal rate of failed requests.

He warned users to expect disruptions to persist for several more hours.

A Day Of Frustration — And Unexpected Calm On Ethereum

While the outages fuelled frustration among users and reignited debates over centralisation in crypto infrastructure, there was one surprising benefit.

Network congestion dropped so sharply that average gas fees on Ethereum plummeted to below 0.1 gwei—an almost negligible cost compared to recent averages.

The dip, a direct result of lower transaction activity, briefly made on-chain interactions cheaper than they have been in months.

A Wake-Up Call For ‘Decentralised’ Dependence

Coinlive believes Monday’s events offered a sobering reflection of crypto’s current state.

The industry’s heavy reliance on centralised providers like AWS and Infura exposes a fundamental contradiction at the heart of Web3’s promise of decentralisation.

As networks scale and innovate, true resilience may only come when infrastructure evolves beyond its dependence on the very systems it was meant to replace.