Kraken.. it is impossible. Any, any little action on etherum your exchange shutting down and it is just impossible to sell an etherum.
check the new status website, if it fits to your observations: https://status.kraken.com/(at least the API timeline is not correct I think. Every know and then there were problems with API too)
I hope the increased fees will help to improve kraken... but I doubt ...
During a heavy load (like the mass selling of ETH a couple of hours ago) I've experienced trading problems in Kraken and Poloniex as well. This is due to massive selling demand and orders piling up.
It is not excuse! Poloniex is at least trying to do something, and they are lagging sometimes but it is possible to trade there even in heavy load situation, kraken just completly shutting down with 502 error, for MOUNTHS.
It's not an excuse; it's a *possible* explanation.
Heavy load is the explanation for the recent performance issues (though going further back there were other technical issues as well that have been addressed). But it's not an excuse and we are doing everything we can to address it as quickly as possible. And it's not just heavy load on the site, but also a heavy load on account verification and support (resulting in long delays in account verification and response time for support tickets).
Why the heavy load?
We have had a perfect storm of growth due to 1) the acquisition of Coinsetter and Cavirtex, 2) the expansion in the US (to 37 states + DC), and 3) the explosion of interest in ether (ETH). 1) and 2) were things we planned and we admit we could have done better with the rollout, but 3) was unexpected. You can read about all this in our recent blog post if you haven't seen it already:
http://blog.kraken.com/post/139889536697/kraken-fee-change-important-updates
As mentioned in that post, we've seen a 2x increase in the number of new accounts. And we've seen a corresponding explosion in the number of orders and requests to our trade engine (requests are requests for information made to the trade server by other platform services).
What are we doing about it?
As mentioned in the context of the fee increase in the blog post linked above, we will be improving our platform and service. Here's a summary of some of the things we've done so far.
Platform
We've identified inefficiencies in orders and requests to the trade server. We have already (as of a bit more than 12 hours ago) made a 66% improvement in the efficiency of requests. This should help a lot during times of heavy load, but we still need to address inefficiencies in order handling. This is probably going to take much longer (I don't have an ETA), and until it's addressed will likely cause some performance issues during times of heavy order load.
Service
We have already brought in 3 new people for the support team. They are still in training, so their full impact isn't felt yet, but are already making a great contribution. We are also in the process of training our support staff on account verification procedures so they can pitch in with account verification as needed when we see a heavy influx of new signups. If the new people are not enough, then we will bring in more to get us back to our old point of fast, high quality service. But it will take some time to tell if we need more people and unfortunately long verification/support response times are going to be with us for a while yet.
We will be doing much more in the coming weeks/months to improve our platform and service, but I want to stress that many changes will take time and we will likely see some performance and support issues in the meantime. It will be a process of slowly progressing step by step. But it is not empty words when we say that we strive to put our clients first and we are always working hard to improve the trading experience.
