Coinbase CEO apologizes for multi-hour outage, pledges tier 1 support

After yet another technical hiccup, this time with Solana, Coinbase’s CEO apologized and pledged to scale infrastructure and provide “tier 1” support for high-demand periods.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has apologized for the Solana delays caused by the exchange’s infrastructure issues, which left users dealing with canceled or slow transactions.

In a post on X on Jan. 22, Armstrong admitted that the platform has the Solana backlog “triaged,” adding that transactions “should generate quickly again.” For users who suffered losses or missed out on the hype due to hours-long disruptions in depositing or withdrawing Solana (SOL) tokens, Armstrong issued his “apologies for the trouble.”

“We have the Solana backlog triaged, and transactions should generate quickly again. If your transaction got canceled you can retry it now – apologies for the trouble.”

Brian Armstrong

He admitted Coinbase needs to do better when it comes to supporting Solana, saying “it’s clear we need to step up our game on Solana, scale our infrastructure, and provide native support for common use cases like DEX/memecoin trading.” Armstrong also promised to give Solana the same top-level support as Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Base, though he didn’t go into specifics.

The crypto community remains skeptical. One user, @PAGANDWOLF, pointed out that the exchange “had many years to fix these problems, including issues from last bull markets when volume is high.” The latest incident, tied to Solana’s surge in activity, seems to have overwhelmed the platform’s systems.

Armstrong noted that the increased traffic is a good thing for Solana but admitted the exchange needs to handle it better. “The surge in activity is great for the ecosystem (and these are high quality problems to have), but we need to do a better job serving our customers during periods of high demand,” he said.