Bitwage, an international payroll platform that gives workers the flexibility to receive their earnings in various currencies, is reporting that service disruption caused by the AWS outage have now been resolved. According to the update from Bitwage, most payment processes are now “back to normal.” Still, there may be some online services that are not working properly.
Bitwage added that its operations team has reviewed all transactions and prepared a summary of “affected payments still pending or delayed that will be resolved tomorrow.”
They further noted that USD funded virtual accounts via Lead Bank, DAI payouts, and all other transactions were “processed normally today.” Bitwage also mentioned that clients don’t need to take any action at this time—and that they’ll notify users again once everything is “fully complete.”
Other service providers have been reporting disruptions as well. For instance, crypto exchange Coinbase, Robinhood Markets, digital assets platform Gemini have all experienced technical issues due to the AWS incident. Banks in the UK and other service providers reported disruptions earlier as well.
These kinds of technical issues highlight the increasingly centralized nature of online services. Due to this type of infrastructure, the chances of systems going down increase because of a central point of failure. Perhaps decentralized services may be the answer, but that could potentially compromise security and might be difficult to scale.
Somewhat similar disruptions to widely-used service providers like Cloudflare have also (in the past) resulted in serious problems. Although customer data and funds may be safe, it does present considerable inconvenience to end-users. Moreover, it can also lead to lost revenue because many customers may not be able to complete their orders. Clients could also lose confidence in their service providers and may choose to halt their trading and purchasing activities.
The latest AWS service disruption highlights the need for building more robust and resilient IT solutions. More technical resources need to be allocated toward ensuring that vital online systems remain operational at all times.
