The issue appears to be related to a problem with a messaging system at the exchange. Offering support to the Binance was OKEx CEO Jay Hao but apparently the trading venue doesn’t need competitors’ help…
Binance Pauses Trading… Again
Earlier on Wednesday, major crypto trading platform Binance announced unexpected downtime. The exchange described the downtime as a “Notice of Temporary System Maintenance” via a blog post earlier today.
Notice of Temporary System Maintenancehttps://t.co/u4Os2fBwQd pic.twitter.com/8xmoQLGc2A
— Binance (@binance) March 4, 2020
The post details that the exchange suspended almost every available service or feature at Binance, including withdrawals. Around four and a half hours after the it first announced the downtime, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao tweeted to confirm that all services were back online.
Withdrawals resumed. All services back to normal. Thank you for your support and understanding.
— CZ Binance 
(@cz_binance) March 4, 2020
As NewsBTC has reported previously, this isn’t the first time that Binance has had trouble this year. Last month, the crypto exchange temporarily disabled a host of features. These included deposits, withdrawals, spot, and margin trading, along with other services.
At around the same time as today’s first announcement, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao tweeted that the issue was related to the exchange’s message broker. In a latter tweet, he added that the issue did not impact funds.
Trading paused due to a message broker issue. Working on it.
— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) March 4, 2020
Fellow Crypto CEO Shut Down for Offer of Support
In amongst many critical responses to the above tweet, was an offer of support for Binance. Fellow crypto exchange CEO Jay Hao gave some technical information that might be of use to Binance.
The OKEx exec’s efforts were not met with gratitude. As per the following tweet, Zhao swiftly blocked Hao on the social network.
Seems my help has been turned down right away. I thought @cz_binance believes blockchain community is open and free. My fault. ;( pic.twitter.com/2u4eygDNPj
— Jay Hao (@JayHao8) March 4, 2020
Its not inconceivable that Zhao took Hao’s potentially facetious, “Need help?” the wrong way. However, the above tweet suggests that the offer of support was indeed genuine.
It’s clearly not a good look for major exchange platforms in an emerging market like crypto to be taking random downtime, interrupting traders and potentially alienating those familiar with more traditional markets. Those with a vested interest in the still relatively small industry, even competitors, should want to prevent incidents that could put crypto in a bad light.
An OKEx statement given to NewsBTC seems to confirm that :
“Offering a hand in opening discussion with market players is a way to uphold an industry standard. While we are all competitors, we go for a healthy competition.”
It continues:
“[Based] on years of experience and trial-and-error on different kind of architecture, MQ, and database design, we are happy to share the knowledge with other stakeholder in crypto industry. After all, we are to build the ecosystem together.”
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