Coinbase’s infrastructure is once again under fire after Solana deposits are delayed, highlighting recurring issues with the platform’s performance.
Coinbase, the public crypto exchange with a market capitalization of nearly $74 billion, is once again facing complaints about its services. This time, it’s Solana users who are venting their frustrations. Multiple users took to X to blast Coinbase for delays in transactions — specifically, Solana (SOL) deposits.
Solana is famous for its fast transactions and high throughput, making it one of the quickest chains out there. But the exchange’s customers on X are saying that’s not the case when dealing with Coinbase. Mike Dudas, co-founder of crypto media outlet The Block, said:
“Sent two transactions from a solana wallet to coinbase today. First took 6.5 hours to land. Second hasn’t landed in 3 hours. Coinbase says the future of crypto is on-chain, but they clearly believe on-chain = evm despite solana being the #1 chain by volume. Need to wake up asap”
This isn’t an isolated incident for Coinbase. The platform has a history of technical glitches, particularly during times of increased market activity. Retail investors have long been familiar with Coinbase’s service disruptions, which seem to surface whenever demand spikes.
Infinite loop
For instance, back in February 2024, when Bitcoin’s price skyrocketed past $64,000, Coinbase experienced a significant outage. During that period, users reported their account balances displaying as zero and were unable to buy or sell crypto due to system errors. Brian Armstrong, Coinbase’s CEO, later attributed the downtime to a surge in traffic that overwhelmed the exchange’s infrastructure.
Just a month later, Coinbase ran into more technical problems. When Solana’s price surged, the exchange struggled with transaction delays, leaving users dealing with late or canceled SOL deposits. A few months later, Coinbase revealed it was using machine learning to predict traffic spikes and scale its databases. But whether that effort actually made a difference is still up in the air.
Fast forward to today, and similar issues are resurfacing. This time, however, Andrew Allen, a protocol expert at Coinbase, directly confirmed on X that the delays users are experiencing with Solana deposits stem from the exchange’s infrastructure and not the chain itself.
“Yeah, it’s on us to improve. Not Solana’s fault. Solana usage has pushed our infra past its limits, and the team is well aware and actively working on it.”
Andrew Allen
In response to the growing complaints, Coinbase Support released a detailed thread acknowledging the delays and explaining the root cause:
“We’re aware of delays with Solana sends and receives on Coinbase. Your funds are safe and secure. Transparency is key, and we want to share what’s happening and how we’re working to fix it.”
Coinbase Support
The thread further explained that Coinbase “has seen unprecedented Solana transaction activity,” causing delays in processing. While the team claims to have improved delays by 30% on the last day, transactions may still take up to 24 hours.
But here’s the thing: the exchange has dealt with these issues time and time again. For a multi-billion-dollar platform and one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, Coinbase’s inability to scale its infrastructure to meet user demands is puzzling. Coupled with multiple complaints about high fees, the company’s repeated technical failures are increasingly hard to overlook.
Open financial system
Coinbase’s mission, as stated on its website, is to “create an open financial system for the world.” The platform claims to make crypto “accessible” to everyone. But for many users, the platform still seems to struggle with handling the basics of crypto transactions when activity surges.
In the case of Solana, it appears that the exchange’s system is simply not prepared for the scale of transactions happening on the chain.
With Solana ranked as the top chain by active addresses according to data from DefiLlama, this poses a serious problem for users expecting instant transactions. Instead, many are left waiting hours — or even days — for their assets to be transferred.
While Coinbase works to address the technical shortcomings that are clearly affecting its users, it might be time to rethink whether it truly has the infrastructure to support its bold claims about the future of crypto. Until then, the idea of an “open financial system” seems a bit closed off for some users — especially those who expect faster service.
