После сбоя Cloudflare: эксперты призывают к полной децентрализации инфраструктуры Web3 After Cloudflare Outage: Experts Call for Complete Decentralization of Web3 Infrastructure

Issues with Cloudflare’s functionality highlighted the reliance of cryptocurrency projects on centralized internet infrastructure. A representative from the EthStorage platform commented on this in an article for Cointelegraph.

According to him, the incident underscored the urgent need for widespread decentralization, spanning from blockchain to user interfaces and data storage systems. Many projects depend on centralized DNS, APIs, and cloud storage, making their infrastructure susceptible to vulnerabilities.

«Decentralizing blockchains through consensus, a reliable set of validators, and smart contracts is essential, but that only addresses one side of the equation. True resilience requires rethinking the entire stack, not just the distributed ledger level,» noted the expert.

This approach ensures that protocols cannot be disabled by the failure of a single centralized component.

The Cloudflare outage on November 18 affected numerous cryptocurrency projects, including Blockchain.com, Coinbase, Ledger, BitMEX, Toncoin, Arbiscan, and DefiLlama, disrupting at least 20% of total internet traffic.

A comparable number of protocols experienced interruptions during the October incident involving Amazon Web Services.

The team behind the Filecoin blockchain platform stated that the Cloudflare failure «demonstrated how much traffic flows through a handful of centralized networks.»

«Just one error in one region disrupted applications worldwide,» the developers commented.

They emphasized that reliance on a single cloud provider poses risks for any community built on the principles of stable data access.

«I watch as my favorite decentralized, censorship-resistant, and robust cryptocurrency Web3 application gets destroyed simply because ‘Cloudflare is down,'» quipped a user.

At EthStorage, they pointed out that many crypto protocols rely on Web2 infrastructure for their front-end and auxiliary layers out of convenience and habit. Many believe that decentralized alternatives are more expensive and complex to maintain, and less user-friendly. However, these assumptions have become «outdated.»

Projects often prioritize successful launches and user acquisition, sidelining the decentralization task.

«Since infrastructure remains ‘in the background’ for end-users, teams lack the incentive to address decentralization issues immediately. As a result, it turns into a ‘future task,’ rather than a fundamental architectural requirement,» the EthStorage expert indicated.

As a solution, he suggested a gradual transition: full decentralization is achievable only through incremental steps, rather than abrupt changes.

«There’s no need to attempt to decentralize all layers of the stack at once. The key is to embed this developmental direction into the roadmap and systematically reduce reliance on centralized solutions for code execution, data storage, and access management as the project evolves,» summarized the specialist.

In late August, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposed new methods to safeguard the decentralization of the second-largest cryptocurrency ecosystem by market capitalization.