The crypto ecosystem has made strides in decentralizing blockchains, but the recent CloudFlare incident has shown that true resilience requires decentralized frontend and storage layers as well, blockchain infrastructure platforms would argue.
Decentralized blockchains through consensus, a robust set of validators, and smart contracts are important, but they represent only one part of the equation,” an EthStorage spokesperson explained to Cointelegraph on Wednesday
“True resilience requires rethinking the entire stack – not just the blockchain layer,” they said, highlighting that remote method calls, domain systems, APIs, indexing and storage must also be decentralized.
This type of “end-to-end decentralization” ensures that protocols cannot be captured by a single point of failure, Ethstorage said.
blockchain.com, Coinbase, Ledger, bitmex, Toncoin, Arbiscan, and Defillama are among the crypto protocols affected by Cloudflare Network Outage on Tuesday, affecting nearly 20% of internet traffic.
A similar number of crypto protocols were also affected by Amazon Web Services Outage a month ago.
EthStorage, Protocol Labs by IPFS and FileCoin, and Arweave are among crypto platforms building decentralized HTTP and storage solutions for crypto protocols to respond more resiliently to internet failures.
Filecoin also discussed the Cloudflare incident, says: “Outages like yesterday show how much traffic flows through a number of centralized networks,” while addition that “relying on a single cloud provider creates limitations for any society that depends on stable data access.”
Ethstorage says that many crypto protocols rely on Web2 infrastructure for frontend and support layers that are out of comfort and familiarity.
Many teams assume that decentralized alternatives are slower, more expensive, harder to maintain, and less user-friendly, but Ethstorage says these assumptions are “outdated.”
They also eliminate decentralization because they are more focused on a smooth launch and building a user base, Ethstorage said. “Because users don’t typically see the infrastructure underneath, there’s little immediate pressure to decentralize. As a result, decentralization becomes an ‘optional step’ rather than a fundamental architectural requirement.”
Decentralization does not have to happen overnight
For crypto protocols that still rely on centralized components, Ethstorage says the good news is that full decentralization can be achieved gradually:
“Achieving full decentralization at every layer of the stack doesn’t have to happen overnight. What’s important is that projects consciously align their roadmap in this direction – gradually removing centralized dependencies across execution, storage, and access as the project matures.”
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They added: “Incorporating this direction into their roadmap ensures that, over time, they move towards a resilient and fully decentralized architecture that cannot be brought down by any single vendor outage.”
Never sacrifice decentralization: Vitalik Buterin
Last Wednesday, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said in an “unreliable manifesto” that should Never sacrifice decentralization In pursuit of adoption.
Buterin and Ethereum Foundation Researchers Yoav Weiss and Marissa Posner, say the protocols sacrifice being trustless from the first moment they include a hosted node or centralized relayer, explaining that while it feels harmless, each new checkpoint becomes a potential chokepoint.
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