@1Referee
I think all the popular exchanges got problems during the past year. Kraken with an outdated engine, Bitfinex DDOS'ed, Poloniex down for updates, Bittrex becoming ridiculous, another one stopping to deal with US customers (Bitfinex or Bitstamp?). BTC-e....
Look at Binance recently forced to close registration and can't even add servers since their account hits daily the max servers allowed by AWS
Topic: [2018-1-13] Kraken Down Nearly 48 Hours, Gives Engineers Time to ‘Rest' (Read 106 times)
January 13, 2018, 04:18:27 PM
January 13, 2018, 03:59:55 PM
I however don't know if there will really be people moving away from that exchange. Free trading might convince them to give that exchange another chance.
If people are delusional enough to stick with a from inside rotten exchange as Bitfinex, and mining platform NiceHash, they will definitely not leave Kraken. I think I would have left that exchange a good month or so ago already. I am quite a frequent trader, and if there is one thing that pisses me off, then it's a slow or not responding exchange. If you just occasionally buy and sell, then there probably isn't really much incentive from that specific type of user to leave. The main thing is that as long as that exchange hasn't been hacked in a very shady manner, they can only be blamed for their amateurish way of handling and operating an exchange. It's pretty sad to see an exchange as Kraken, that was known to be quite a reliable exchange in the past, is struggling this much.
January 13, 2018, 12:42:52 PM
It seems that Kraken has made a return some hours ago, where they try to make people happy with free trading. If I was a trader there, this would be the moment to say goodbye to that exchange due to their structural problems. It's not that they are shady or whatever, while I can understand why people may think so, but it's their incompetence that worries me. I hope that people no longer have to suffer from Kraken's incompetence, but I'm afraid it's just a matter of time before we see them mess up again. I however don't know if there will really be people moving away from that exchange. Free trading might convince them to give that exchange another chance.
January 13, 2018, 07:48:45 AM
Giving "engineers" time to rest? What is this for nonsense? Who gives people with millions and millions of funds rest/piece of mind? I haven't ever heard about giving engineers rest.
I have personally experienced a situation where I work, where there have been technical difficulties concerning very severe electricity problems. Those responsible for fixing it have been working non stop for days.
One team comes in and the other team goes out, that's how it works. If you aren't willing to arrange this (and yes, it increases the cost significantly), you don't deserve to call yourself a professional exchange.
There have to be different groups of engineers ready to take over the job after every 12-24 hours........
I have personally experienced a situation where I work, where there have been technical difficulties concerning very severe electricity problems. Those responsible for fixing it have been working non stop for days.
One team comes in and the other team goes out, that's how it works. If you aren't willing to arrange this (and yes, it increases the cost significantly), you don't deserve to call yourself a professional exchange.
There have to be different groups of engineers ready to take over the job after every 12-24 hours........
January 13, 2018, 07:11:14 AM
This just goes to show how not ready exchanges were to offer services to the horde of new customers coming in every day. Of course, it is not good that an exchange is down for that long; but it's good that the kraken team is trying to solve the issues and the mass number of users is good news for crypto.
January 13, 2018, 07:04:48 AM
This would of course be worrying for the users. When one of the largest exchanges of the world goes offline, without notice for 2 days, then people might begin to think that there are bigger problems than a routine upgrade. The Company has also not been forthcoming with information. With the number of exchange hacks that have taken place, people are right in being extra skeptical.
January 13, 2018, 06:48:51 AM
Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken is still down nearly 48 hours after the site initiated a system upgrade. Kraken engineers had estimated the downtime would only be two hours. Much like Gilligan’s three-hour cruise that went horribly wrong, Kraken users all over the Internet are raging over the downtime and asking difficult questions.
Beset by problems
Nearly all digital currency exchanges have faced significant growing pains in the last year, as the interest in cryptocurrencies has grown exponentially. Coinbase and Bitstamp have been overwhelmed with user traffic, leading to delays. Bitfinex has been hit by DDOS attacks and recently had to stop registration for new users because of overwhelming demand. Binance and Bittrex have also halted new user signups.
Still, Kraken has arguably suffered the most problems of all major exchanges. Users, including myself, have experienced multiple connection errors and extraordinary difficulties placing and cancelling orders. It’s sometimes necessary to refresh Kraken’s page 10-15 times before being able to execute an action. Numerous users have complained that Kraken posted their orders multiple times (after telling them their order failed initially), in some cases costing them thousands of dollars.
Upgrade to fix it all?
While many have encouraged users of Kraken to go elsewhere, it’s not always that easy. US users are particularly limited in the exchanges they can use, particularly with Bitfinex ditching them earlier last year. For certain altcoins, US traders may only be able to use Kraken to trade them against fiat. Likewise, Kraken is one of the only markets where US residents can long or short Bitcoin.
Such users were delighted when, on December 15, Kraken announced a major upgrade to fix the site’s usability problems:
“Kraken.com performance is extremely degraded and unreliable. Clients can expect severe latency and difficulty interacting with all web and API services. Requests will frequently timeout and fail. At the moment, the only solution is to wait and try again later.
Next week we will be rolling out a major systems upgrade which should resolve these scaling and load issues. The upgrade is long overdue and has been substantially delayed by the diversion of resources toward the protracted fire fighting effort required to deal with the last several months of unrelenting growth.”
Two hours, possibly longer
The upgrade scheduled for the third week of December was rescheduled twice, before finally commencing January 10 at 9 PM PST. The status page Kraken set up for the upgrade stated:
“We are performing a system upgrade on Thursday, January 11 at approximately 5:00 UTC (Wednesday January 10 at 9 pm PT). Kraken services will be offline for about 2 hours during the upgrade, possibly longer.”
Over the next two days, Kraken has continued to update the status page, complaining of late starts and the upgrade progressing more slowly than expected. Finally, they announced that the upgrade was in its final stages, before then posting that “a number of issues” came up in their “final testing.” Kraken is not clear on why this “final testing” was apparently done on production servers.
About one day after the two hour upgrade began, Kraken posted:
“We are making progress on the few remaining issues but don't have a definite launch time yet. We intend to cancel stale (and possibly all) orders and pause liquidations upon resuming service. More details to follow soon. Thank you for your patience.”
It’s unclear exactly how this will work. The price of Bitcoin and altcoins has of course changed over the last two days, and nobody is quite sure how Kraken will keep people from losing money on long and short positions that might have been closed had the exchange been working properly.
Most astonishing of all, about 36 hours after the upgrade began, Kraken apparently sent their engineers home to take a nap! Kraken writes:
“We are close but rather than launch immediately ahead of the team passing out, we will push off a bit to get some rest and be able to better monitor systems and react to problems following launch. Unfortunately, this means several more hours of delay.”
At press time, Kraken is still down with no ETA for resumption of trading, and the exchange has not responded to our requests for comment.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/kraken-down-nearly-48-hours-gives-engineers-time-to-rest-before-resuming-service
Beset by problems
Nearly all digital currency exchanges have faced significant growing pains in the last year, as the interest in cryptocurrencies has grown exponentially. Coinbase and Bitstamp have been overwhelmed with user traffic, leading to delays. Bitfinex has been hit by DDOS attacks and recently had to stop registration for new users because of overwhelming demand. Binance and Bittrex have also halted new user signups.
Still, Kraken has arguably suffered the most problems of all major exchanges. Users, including myself, have experienced multiple connection errors and extraordinary difficulties placing and cancelling orders. It’s sometimes necessary to refresh Kraken’s page 10-15 times before being able to execute an action. Numerous users have complained that Kraken posted their orders multiple times (after telling them their order failed initially), in some cases costing them thousands of dollars.
Upgrade to fix it all?
While many have encouraged users of Kraken to go elsewhere, it’s not always that easy. US users are particularly limited in the exchanges they can use, particularly with Bitfinex ditching them earlier last year. For certain altcoins, US traders may only be able to use Kraken to trade them against fiat. Likewise, Kraken is one of the only markets where US residents can long or short Bitcoin.
Such users were delighted when, on December 15, Kraken announced a major upgrade to fix the site’s usability problems:
“Kraken.com performance is extremely degraded and unreliable. Clients can expect severe latency and difficulty interacting with all web and API services. Requests will frequently timeout and fail. At the moment, the only solution is to wait and try again later.
Next week we will be rolling out a major systems upgrade which should resolve these scaling and load issues. The upgrade is long overdue and has been substantially delayed by the diversion of resources toward the protracted fire fighting effort required to deal with the last several months of unrelenting growth.”
Two hours, possibly longer
The upgrade scheduled for the third week of December was rescheduled twice, before finally commencing January 10 at 9 PM PST. The status page Kraken set up for the upgrade stated:
“We are performing a system upgrade on Thursday, January 11 at approximately 5:00 UTC (Wednesday January 10 at 9 pm PT). Kraken services will be offline for about 2 hours during the upgrade, possibly longer.”
Over the next two days, Kraken has continued to update the status page, complaining of late starts and the upgrade progressing more slowly than expected. Finally, they announced that the upgrade was in its final stages, before then posting that “a number of issues” came up in their “final testing.” Kraken is not clear on why this “final testing” was apparently done on production servers.
About one day after the two hour upgrade began, Kraken posted:
“We are making progress on the few remaining issues but don't have a definite launch time yet. We intend to cancel stale (and possibly all) orders and pause liquidations upon resuming service. More details to follow soon. Thank you for your patience.”
It’s unclear exactly how this will work. The price of Bitcoin and altcoins has of course changed over the last two days, and nobody is quite sure how Kraken will keep people from losing money on long and short positions that might have been closed had the exchange been working properly.
Most astonishing of all, about 36 hours after the upgrade began, Kraken apparently sent their engineers home to take a nap! Kraken writes:
“We are close but rather than launch immediately ahead of the team passing out, we will push off a bit to get some rest and be able to better monitor systems and react to problems following launch. Unfortunately, this means several more hours of delay.”
At press time, Kraken is still down with no ETA for resumption of trading, and the exchange has not responded to our requests for comment.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/kraken-down-nearly-48-hours-gives-engineers-time-to-rest-before-resuming-service
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