Mysterious Poloniex Downtime Prompts Community Frustration

Published at: April 24, 2020

Cryptocurrency exchange, Poloniex, experienced unscheduled downtime on April 24 before resuming trading for all pairs except GRIN/BTC.

Poloniex announced in a tweet sent that the exchange had to halt its activity due to an unexpected issue. Interestingly, the exchange warns users that it does not intend to resume the trading of the Grin (GRIN)/Bitcoin (BTC) pair, which is apparently the root of the malfunction.

Poloniex resumed activity before going into maintenance mode again about an hour later. Once it resumed trading for good, its announcement read:

“All markets except GRIN/BTC are now re-enabled for full trading. Our initial maintenance was related to our GRIN/BTC maintenance earlier today. Following that, we began experiencing issues with one of our service providers. We will provide updates once everything is resolved.”

As of press time, Poloniex did not answer Cointelegraph’s press inquiry.

The community shows frustration

Some Twitter users asked Poloniex how they can withdraw their Grin holdings from the platform, apparently showing fear that the exchange’s Grin wallet was compromised. Still, a cybercriminal emptying the exchange’s Grin wallet appears unlikely if one considers that only the GRIN/BTC trading pair was suspended, while GRIN/USDT trading continues as usual.

Furthermore, many Twitter users voiced their frustration over the unscheduled maintenance, with some suggesting that it is malicious in nature. One Twitter user commented:

“It’s always the case, maintenance is always at the time when BTC is moving, lost enough since [the] market was going down and wanted to cut my long. [I’ll] never use this site again for my trading.”

Unscheduled maintenance is not too uncommon among cryptocurrency exchanges. This is thanks in part to the space being young and the infrastructure being still under development. As Cointelegraph reported in February, Binance ran into a number of performance issues as well. The also halted trading for unscheduled maintenance on Feb. 19 and again at the beginning of March.

At the time, Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao, refused technical help from the CEO of competing exchange OKEx, Jay Hao, and blocked him on Twitter. Later that same month, OKEx only gave its users a few hours notice before undergoing maintenance in the midst of significant market volatility.

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Bitcoin
Trading
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Cryptocurrency Exchange
Cryptocurrencies
Poloniex
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