An Amazon Web Services disruption on Oct. 20 knocked out MetaMask and other ETH wallets displays and slowed Base network operations, exposing how cloud infrastructure dependencies ripple through decentralized systems when a single provider fails.
AWS reported a fault in its US-EAST-1 region starting at 03:11 ET, with DNS and EC2 load-balancer health monitoring failures cascading into DynamoDB and other services.
Amazon declared full mitigation by 06:35 ET and complete restoration by evening, though backlog clearing extended into Oct. 21.
Coinbase posted an active incident, noting an “AWS outage impacting multiple apps and services,” while users reported that MetaMask balances were displaying zero and that Base network transactions were experiencing delays.
The mechanical link runs through Infura, MetaMask’s default RPC provider. MetaMask documentation directs users to Infura’s status page during outages because the wallet routes most read and write operations through Infura endpoints by default.
When Infura’s cloud infrastructure wobbles, balance displays and transaction calls can misreport even though funds remain secure on-chain.
The disruption affected Ethereum and layer-2 networks that rely on Infura’s RPC infrastructure, creating UI failures that mimicked on-chain problems despite consensus mechanisms continuing to function.
Base chain metrics from Oct. 21 show $17.19 billion in total value locked, approximately 11 million transactions per 24 hours, 842,000 active addresses daily, and $1.37 billion in DEX volume over the prior day.
Short outages of six hours or less typically reduce DEX volume by 5% to 12% and transaction counts by 3% to 8%, with TVL remaining stable because the issues are cosmetic rather than systemic.
Extended disruptions lasting six to 24 hours can result in a 10% to 25% decrease in DEX volume, an 8% to 20% decrease in transactions, and a 0.5% to 1.5% d
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Author: Gino Matos
