What the AWS Outage Revealed — and Why Projects Like Fluence Are Rebuilding Cloud Infrastructure for Web3

A latest outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) froze 1000’s of purposes and reignited debate about web3’s reliance on centralized cloud suppliers. 

The disruption uncovered how deeply crypto platforms nonetheless rely on Web2 infrastructure for methods meant to function with out interruption.

How a Centralized Outage Crippled Decentralized Systems

On October 20, 2025, the AWS US-EAST-1 area went darkish for almost three hours on account of a DNS bug in its DynamoDB service, freezing 1000’s of purposes worldwide. The outage, which started round 07:55 UTC and was resolved by 09:35 UTC, stemmed from a latent software program defect that created an empty DNS document, requiring guide intervention to repair.

The AWS outage triggered a chain reaction, disrupting main tech platforms like Lyft, Peloton, and Roblox. The crypto and web3 trade additionally skilled widespread disruption. Coinbase Advanced, a key buying and selling platform, halted operations totally, leaving customers locked out of their accounts and unable to execute trades. 

Base, Coinbase’s Ethereum Layer-2 blockchain, skilled extreme slowdowns, with transaction throughput dropping dramatically as AWS-hosted infrastructure failed. Other ecosystems weren’t spared: Solana noticed intermittent node failures, Ethereum’s decentralized apps (dApps) confronted API disruptions, and Polygon reported partial outages in its scaling options.

This occasion known as into query the elementary promise of blockchains to create purposes that may function constantly with out counting on any single server, firm, or authorities. The failure revealed how single factors of failure proceed to compromise web3’s imaginative and prescient of unstoppable purposes.

“The latest AWS outage is a reminder that web3’s promise of decentralization can’t depend on centralized backbones. Every outage like AWS’s reveals the price of centralization, not simply in downtime however in belief,” mentioned Evgeny Ponomarev, co-founder of Fluence.

Decentralized Compute Shows Promise Amid Technical Hurdles

Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN) introduces a brand new mannequin for provisioning compute assets. Instead of relying on centralized knowledge facilities, DePIN connects a worldwide pool of unbiased suppliers by a peer-to-peer market. 

Each server contributes compute, storage, or GPU capability that’s verified on-chain for transparency. Control is distributed, not owned, and the system scales organically as new contributors be part of.

This construction replaces large, single-region knowledge facilities with a distribution throughout 1000’s of unbiased servers. If one fails, the workload could be seamlessly migrated to different servers or knowledge facilities.

This distributed mannequin additionally drives a major price benefit. By tapping into idle world compute capability, DePIN suppliers obtain better effectivity, typically reporting prices which can be as much as 85% lower compared with major hyperscalers. For occasion, Fluence is one in every of a number of tasks creating decentralized compute networks below the DePIN mannequin.

The platform connects verified data-center suppliers that meet frequent compliance requirements, permitting builders to run workloads throughout distributed CPU and GPU assets as an alternative of relying solely on centralized clouds. Fluence’s community presently helps general-purpose computing by digital CPUs and GPU-based processing for AI and high-performance duties.

According to firm knowledge, it operates about 11,000 digital CPUs and 70 terabytes of reminiscence throughout 9 suppliers. Clients utilizing the community embody Antier Solutions, NEO Foundation, and Nodes.Garden.

Other DePIN tasks equivalent to Akash Network, Aethir, and io.web are pursuing comparable approaches for distributed infrastructure, masking cloud marketplaces and large-scale GPU aggregation. Together, these efforts mirror an rising shift towards a extra diversified compute layer for web3.

Right now, DePIN is reimagining bodily infrastructure, together with telecom and transportation networks, vitality grids, and extra. As it was said in the latest a16z 2025 State of Crypto report, the World Economic Forum tasks the DePIN class will develop to $3.5 trillion by 2028.

While DePIN can not but match the rapid world scale of a hyperscaler, its open supply foundations make it much more adaptable. By constructing on open requirements, workloads can transfer throughout a number of suppliers with minimal friction. Developers achieve actual portability as an alternative of being locked right into a single vendor’s API or billing mannequin.

In observe, decentralized networks like Fluence are already displaying how open supply infrastructure can join unbiased suppliers into one interoperable cloth that behaves like a cloud, but stays absolutely moveable and clear.

Evgeny defined:

“The aim is to not substitute AWS in a single day however to make migration easy and alternative actual,” mentioned Evgeny Ponomarev, co-founder of Fluence. “When compute runs on open protocols throughout many suppliers, outages cease being systemic failures. They develop into native occasions the community can take in”

This open, cross-provider cloud mannequin provides a path towards resilience that centralized architectures can not match. As DePIN matures, it might redefine the baseline for reliability by making the cloud itself open supply and the act of migration so simple as redeploying code.

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