Maintenance for Hours: What is Going on at Kraken?

It has not been a great couple of months for Kraken. At a time when other exchanges are making a killing from the Crypto boom, Kraken has been in constant repair. Even the Kraken CEO apologised for the degraded service on social media.

Now it seems that the exchange has taken the maintenance to a new level of disruption as they have been down for hours on end. This has left numerous traders fuming at a time when the markets may be particularly interesting for an entry.

"System Upgrade"

What started as a relatively minor 2 hour "upgrade" has devolved into constant announcements of further delays. The upgrade starts at 5am and after almost 4 hours of constant delays, they made the following announcement:

Upgrade Status at Kraken

This is not fully verified but it does indeed seem like a really bizarre comment from someone over at Kraken. The official statements from the exchange was the following:

We are still working to resolve the issues that we have identified and our team is working around the clock to ensure a smooth upgrade. This means it may still take several hours before we can relaunch the site

These were all part of the changes that Kraken was alluding to on their site over the past couple of weeks. These upgrades were started early this year and were much touted by the CEO. The much anticipated roll-out was unfortunately delayed and it seems as if there is still no end in sight.

Crypto Traders React

While the traders who use Kraken were assured that "protracted downtime has nothing to do with funding/reserves", many were still seething at the thought of being locked out of the exchange for hours on end.

As one can see from the discussion in this Subreddit, many were suggesting that trader who still use the exchange take their money somewhere else. Others were a bit more moderating pointing out that a poorly tested product would do more harm than good.

Although some traders may still be open to trying the new platform that is being released, many others have called it quits. The platform has become almost unusable with numerous server errors that plague every corner of the site.

For example, one of the most annoying aspects of Kraken was also one of the most vital for an exchange. When clients want to a place an order for a coin, they will often have to do it numerous times before it is properly logged onto the system.

One of the only silver linings for Kraken is that numerous other exchanges have closed their books to new registration. This means that there may still be some traders willing to give Kraken a crack when it is finished with the new platform.

Featured Image via Kraken