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Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) provided live updates on today’s outage that forced the exchange to halt spot trading. According to CZ, the outage was caused by a software bug in its spot-matching engine, which processes users’ trade orders. The outrage was surprising for the world’s largest exchange by volume which reported a 100% uptime last year.
Initial analysis indicates matching engine encountered a bug on a trailing stop order (a weird one). Recovering. Est 30-120 min ish. Waiting for more precise ETA.
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) March 24, 2023
Deposits & withdrawals are paused as a SOP (standard operating procedure). Funds are #SAFU. 🙏 https://t.co/mvtGQ3JlMA
Binance Suspends Spot Trading Activities Due to Software Bug
Binance suspended all spot trading activities on Friday after suffering a rare outage due to a software glitch, the crypto exchange’s CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao tweeted. CZ offered live updates about the situation as the Binance team addressed the issue and answered questions asked by other users.
“Initial analysis indicates matching engine encountered a bug on a trailing stop order (a weird one). Recovering. Est 30-120 min ish. Waiting for more precise ETA.“
– Changpeng Zhao wrote in one of the tweets.
CZ added that suspending spot deposits and withdrawals was part of the standard operating procedure and reassured investors that their funds were safe. In a subsequent tweet, Binance’s boss said Engine 1 was back online, adding more time was needed “to do reconciliations, and for other engines to catch up.”
“We were a bit unlucky with this bug. Our engines take hourly snapshots. This bug happened 57 min in. So, replay/reconciliation takes a bit longer.”
– Zhao said in another tweet.
Binance, the world’s biggest crypto exchange, controls over 60% of all crypto spot volume. According to data from Arcane Research, Binance expanded its market share of Bitcoin spot volume to more than 90% in recent quarters, thanks to zero commissions. Bitcoin and Ether fell briefly after the outage before recovering.
Binance Achieved 100% Engine Uptime and Availability in 2022
This marks a rare occasion for an outage at Binance. In 2022, the crypto exchange’s spot matching engine achieved 100% uptime and had zero Priority 1 (P1) and Priority 2 (P2) incidents, despite six live upgrades on the platform during the year.
In 2018, Binance suspended trading and customer withdrawals due to a sharp jump in user and trading activity. It took several hours before trading and withdrawal services were back online.
More recently, Binance said it would stop sterling deposits and withdrawals, several weeks after the company halted dollar transfers. The move came amid an increasing clampdown by US regulators on the crypto industry.
Last month, New York financial regulators banned the minting of new BUSD tokens – a Binance-branded stablecoin issued by blockchain infrastructure firm Paxos. By the end of February, investors withdrew over $6 billion from BUSD, indicating that regulators’ intervention was putting considerable pressure on the exchange.
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