Major Indian crypto exchange WazirX experienced disruptions caused by system failures for more than four hours Sunday.
In a tweet at 5:24 PM UTC, WazirX CEO Nischal Shetty reported that the crypto exchange had “hit some internal limits” set by one of the infrastructure providers. The load on Wazir’s system reportedly created “a ripple effect on all the services,” causing some of the exchange’s 1.8 million users to report being unable to see any funds in their accounts during the outage.
“It’s because parts of the system are not working,” said Shetty. “One such system is the one that shows the fund value. It’ll start showing again as soon as all the services are back up.”
More than four hours later, the CEO reported that users could once again see funds in their accounts and were able to cancel orders, but said that trading was still disabled.
No matter how much you prepare for traffic, some system loads are crazy.
Wallet is safe, yes. The load on our systems are way too much. Scaling is taking longer. https://t.co/H5rklCILPm
— Nischal (WazirX) ⚡️ (@NischalShetty) April 4, 2021
According to WazirX co-founder and chief operating officer Siddharth Menon, the exchange was experiencing all-time high trades across its systems shortly before the outage occurred. Shetty reported that the firm had seen more than $270 million in trading volume within 24 hours earlier today, making the crypto exchanges one of the largest in India. In addition, the price of WazirX’s native WRX token has risen more than 160% in the last day to reach $4.15 at the time of publication.
Reports have been circulating for several months claiming the Indian government is planning to introduce a possible ban on private cryptocurrencies. Shetty has joined representatives from other exchanges in India in drafting a presentation note highlighting recommendations for crypto regulations in the country. The WazirX CEO said the approach was necessary given the negative stance taken by government authorities toward cryptocurrencies.
