On June 13, Amazon Web Services (AWS) experienced a minor outage that lasted for approximately three hours. During this time, AWS reported increased error rates and latencies in parts of the United States. While the outage impacted mainstream news organizations like the Associated Press, it had no significant impact on the Ethereum network nodes, which heavily rely on AWS hosting.
According to Ethernodes, about 64.5% of the Ethereum network relies on Amazon hosting providers. However, due to the regional nature of the outage, only a small fraction of the network may have been affected. The high reliance on AWS raises concerns about the decentralization of the Ethereum network, as a wider disruption could have had a significant impact.
Evan Van Ness, an Ethereum advocate, pointed out that if the outage had occurred in Europe, it could have had a more significant impact. This is because a substantial amount of Ether (ETH) is staked on Lido, with approximately 7.1 million or 35% of the total staked in the cloud.
The Ethereum network has faced criticism in the past for its centralization due to its reliance on infrastructure provider Infura, which offers network nodes to companies and organizations. Many of these entities, including the liquid staking platform Lido, heavily rely on AWS for cloud hosting services.
AWS later identified the root cause of the issue as a problem with AWS Lambda, a service that allows customers to run code for various applications. The issue was resolved, and AWS reported that all services were operating normally.
According to hosting platform Kinsta, AWS holds the dominant market share among cloud hosting providers, accounting for 34% of the market.
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