The official Avalanche web wallet experienced a six-hour service disruption yesterday, leaving users unable to access or manage their AVAX tokens. The outage was triggered by a surge in API traffic caused by the Avalaunch platform's airdrop snapshot for its XAVA token, forcing the wallet into maintenance mode.
Timeline of the Outage: Airdrop Snapshot Overwhelms Nodes
According to Avalanche's status page at status.avax.network, the incident began at 18:05 UTC when web wallet nodes saw a sharp spike in API traffic. After users reported being unable to view their balances, the wallet was taken into maintenance mode at 18:40 UTC due to "degraded performance for some users accessing the API nodes directly or indirectly through the wallet interface."
The root cause was attributed to the Avalaunch airdrop. Avalaunch, a token launchpad on Avalanche, had announced a snapshot time to distribute XAVA tokens to AVAX validators and delegators. This prompted a rush of users staking or validating tokens to qualify, placing heavy load on wallet infrastructure.
Impact and Response: Funds Safe but No Alternatives
While no funds were lost, users had no control over their assets for six hours. The Avalanche network relies exclusively on this single web wallet; although alternative wallets have been proposed, none are yet operational. The outage highlighted the fragility of a single-wallet architecture.
The team implemented a fix on May 4 at 02:29 UTC and rolled it out progressively. However, as of writing, Binance has halted AVAX withdrawals as a precautionary measure.
Not the First Bump in the Road
This is not the first time Avalanche's network has suffered from high-load issues. In February, the launch of Pangolin (Avalanche's first DEX) caused a cross-chain bridge bug that prevented users from accessing or transacting funds for over 30 hours due to abnormal token minting.
Both incidents underscore the need for better infrastructure scalability and more diverse wallet options as the ecosystem grows.
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