The Kraken exchanger, based in San Francisco, was disconnected on January 10 for an update of the commercial platform. It was planned that it would last two hours, however, the website remained inactive for more than 24 hours.
This generated neither a discontent in its users, due to the fact that the transactions were not available, nor the withdrawals during the period. Because of the saturation of tweets they received, they reported that: “Yes, this is our new record of downtime since we launched in 2013: no, we’re not proud of it.”
With the online return, Kraken informed that the operations both on his Twitter and on his website would be free until January 31, as a reward to his users for the inconveniences caused. In addition, the exchange is reducing the margin position fees to 0.005% until the end of the month. In the same way, they affirmed that all the funds of their clients remained safe during the execution time.
Consequently, in a communiqué issued they described the arrangements made by the group. Regarding the market, it is clear that orders made before the cessation of operations were canceled, as well as those funds in orders opened before the date of readjustment were returned to the previous balances.
However, during the update, there were certain modifications such as: The new verification process of the account was delayed to its lowest priority, the highest staggered accounts will have priority over the new accounts that seek the first verification. Likewise, deposits may take up to two additional business days for funds to be entered into business accounts.
Alert to possible fails again
Through their website they made a call to be alert to an unforeseen closure. “We still have to work a little longer before the new commercial engine is as good as we want, but the replacement this week was an important first step to have a better trading experience.” This was announced by the Kraken team.
According to the latest information offered, the problem is due to a saturation of the legacy commerce engine and they arrived at the migration. Although, they indicated that they would be
evaluating the performance of the engine. But, on the other hand, they warned that the site will go down if necessary, which can happen with little or no notification.
It should be noted that Kraken only updated its status page with promises of progress and an explanation of an error found in the production environment. All this in order to provide a better service to their customers, since many had been dissatisfied with the delays generated by cryptobolsa.
Other Exchange that have been disconnected
Kraken has not been the only one to have downtime, at the beginning of last year Coinbase also showed a message of “unavailable service”, informing its users that the site was in maintenance. Even, Luno, Bitfinex and Bitstamp experienced delays or disconnected for support in December, after an influx of new users of cryptocurrencies inspired by the growing bitcoin.
The exchanger platforms are usually programmed taking into account a certain number of users and transactions. When these limits are exceeded, it is necessary to update the platform to increase its capabilities. That is why many exchangers are forced to enter the maintenance phase to adjust their capabilities.
Every time there are more bitcoiners users who dare to trade, so it is not ruled out that in the future a similar episode could happen again, not only with Karaken, but also with any other platform.
