Update: Binance has resumed its service and it should be fully operational shortly. It is also offering a temporary 70-percent discount on all trading fees as an apology to its users – pretty decent gesture on their side.
Yesterday popular exchange desk Binance abruptly closed down its platform in order to perform a temporary “system maintenance,” promising the website will be fully operational again within 12 hours. But it seems the company has run into further trouble – and it now says its site will remain down for several more hours.
Needless to say, this complication has riled up some users who felt that Binance should have notified them about the downtime in advance.
“Surprise maintenance…” one thread on Reddit reads. “This cannot happen again without a [previous] notification…”
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Meanwhile, the exchange desk claims the reason for delay was an “unforeseen slowdown” in the speed of their data synchronization efforts.
Due to an unforeseen slowdown in the speed of our data sync, we now estimate for all trading activity to resume at 2018/02/09 4AM (UTC). In the 30 minutes prior to the commencement of trading, users will be able to use utilize all other account related functions. https://t.co/ll1HgPslTU
— binance (@binance_2017) February 8, 2018
The exchange desk has promised its users that its team estimates the service should be back up and running around 4AM (UTC) on Friday (February 9). The message further says that users should be able to use “all other account related functions” at least “30 minutes prior to commencement of trading.”
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has since taken to Twitter to clarify the issues the exchange desk is dealing with:
We experienced a server issue on our replica database cluster, causing some data to be out of sync. Need to fully resync from master. Due the size of the data, it will take several hours. No data is lost. We appreciate your understanding and support.
— CZ (@cz_binance) February 8, 2018
Still waiting on data copy, it will take a while, another 10 hrs at the current estimate. Due to the unexpected length of time, we will allow 30 mins for people to withdraw orders before trading resumes when system is back.
— CZ (@cz_binance) February 8, 2018
Following the recent cryptocurrency boom, exchanges have been struggling with intermittent technical issues since at least December last year.
Indeed, heaps of leading exchanges, including Binance and Bittrex, were at some point forced to close down registrations in order to keep their systems operating properly. While Bittrex has yet to open sign-ups for new users, Binance was quick to resume onboarding new blood.
As a matter of fact, 250,000 people rushed to register with Binance only an hour after it re-opened registrations on one occasion earlier in January.
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