How a single database update can cripple 20% of the global internet

November 18 Fault Alert: Who Pays for Infrastructure When Cloudflare Experiences Outages?

At 6:20 AM Eastern Time, approximately 20% of global internet traffic suddenly came to a halt. A routine database permission adjustment triggered a chain reaction, leading to a widespread outage of core services that support modern internet operations.

This was not a hacking attack, nor an external threat. The root cause was simply a configuration file that, after doubling in size, exceeded the system’s preset limit.

A Disaster Starting from a Single Database Query

The timeline of the incident is clear and brutal:

UTC 11:05 — Cloudflare updates permissions on the ClickHouse database cluster to enhance security and reliability.

UTC 11:28 — Changes propagate to user environments, first error logs appear.

UTC 11:48 — Official status page admits to a fault.

UTC 17:06 — Service fully recovers, lasting over 5 hours.

The Technical Truth

The core issue was a seemingly simple oversight: a database query responsible for generating Cloudflare’s bot protection configuration lacked a filter for the “database name.”

This caused the system to return duplicate entries—one from the default database, another from the underlying r0 storage database. The size of the configuration file doubled, expanding from about 60 features to over 200.

Cloudflare had set a hardcoded upper limit of 200 features for memory pre-allocation, with engineers believing “this is well above our current actual usage.” Until the incident, this seemingly generous safety margin suddenly collapsed.

The oversized file triggered the limit, causing Rust code to throw an error: “thread fl2_worker_thread panicked: called Result::unwrap() on an Err value”

The bot protection system is at the core of Cloudflare’s network control layer. When it fails, the health check system used to guide load balancers—“which servers are operational”—also fails.

Ironically, this configuration file is regenerated every 5 minutes. As long as queries run on the updated cluster nodes, erroneous data is produced. The result is Cloudflare’s network oscillating between “normal” and “fault”—sometimes loading correct files, sometimes incorrect ones.

This “repeated interruption” led engineers to believe they were under a large-scale distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. Because internal errors usually do not cause this cyclical recovery-crash loop.

Eventually, after all ClickHouse nodes completed updates, each generated file was incorrect. Without accurate system signals, the protection system defaults to “conservative mode,” marking most servers as “unhealthy.” Internet traffic continues to flood Cloudflare’s edge nodes but cannot be routed correctly.

The Quiet Moment of the Global Network

Web2 Platform Outage

• X Platform received 9,706 fault reports
• ChatGPT stopped responding mid-conversation
• Spotify streaming interrupted
• Uber and food delivery platforms malfunctioned
• Gamers experienced forced disconnections
• Even McDonald’s self-service kiosks displayed error screens

No One in Crypto Is Safe

Major exchanges’ web interfaces crashed, users faced login pages and trading interfaces that wouldn’t load.

Blockchain explorers (like Etherscan, Arbiscan) went offline directly.

Data analytics platforms (DeFiLlama) experienced intermittent server errors.

Hardware wallet providers issued notices of decreased service availability.

The Only “Exception”: The Blockchain Protocols Themselves

Reports indicate that major exchanges did not experience front-end failures; on-chain transactions continued normally. The blockchain itself remained fully operational, with no signs of consensus interruption.

This exposes a sharp contradiction: if the blockchain is still producing blocks but no one can access it, is cryptocurrency truly “online”?

Cloudflare’s Role in Global Internet Traffic

Cloudflare does not host websites nor provide cloud server services. Its role is that of an “intermediary”—between users and the internet.

Key Data:

• Serves 24 million websites
• Has edge nodes in 120 countries and 330 cities
• Handles about 20% of global internet traffic
• Holds 82% market share in DDoS protection
• Total edge bandwidth reaches 449 Tbps

When such an “intermediary” fails, all dependent services behind it become “unreachable.”

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince stated in an official release: “This is Cloudflare’s most severe outage since 2019… In over 6 years, we have never experienced a failure that could prevent most core internet traffic from passing through our network.”

Four Major Failures in 18 Months: Why Has the Industry Not Changed?

July 2024 — CrowdStrike security update vulnerability causes global IT system paralysis (flights canceled, hospitals delayed, financial services frozen)

October 20, 2025 — AWS outage lasts 15 hours; DynamoDB service in US East disrupted, causing multiple blockchain networks to go offline

October 29, 2025 — Microsoft Azure sync issues; Microsoft 365 and Xbox Live services down

November 18, 2025 — Cloudflare outage, affecting about 20% of global internet traffic

Risks of a Single Contractor Model

AWS controls about 30% of the global cloud infrastructure market, Microsoft Azure 20%, and Google Cloud 13%. These three companies manage over 60% of the infrastructure supporting the modern internet.

The crypto industry was supposed to be a “decentralized” solution, but now it is forced to rely on these most centralized global infrastructure providers.

When failures occur, the industry’s only “disaster recovery strategy” is: wait. Wait for Cloudflare to fix, AWS to recover, Azure to deploy patches.

The Falsehood of “Decentralization”: Protocol Layer Decentralization Does Not Equal Access Layer Decentralization

The vision the crypto industry once painted was:

Decentralized finance, censorship-resistant currencies, trustless systems, no single point of failure, code is law

But the reality on November 18 was: a single morning outage caused most crypto services to halt for hours.

On a technical level: no blockchain protocol reported a failure.

In practical use: trading interfaces crashed, browsers failed, data platforms went down, 500 errors filled the screens.

Users could not access the “decentralized” blockchain they “own.” The protocols themselves were functioning normally—provided you could “reach” them.

Why does the industry still choose “convenience” over “principle”?

Building decentralized infrastructure yourself means: buying expensive hardware, ensuring stable power, maintaining dedicated bandwidth, hiring security experts, implementing geographic redundancy, building disaster recovery systems, 24/7 monitoring.

Using Cloudflare only requires: clicking a button, entering credit card info, deploying within minutes.

Startups pursue “fast go-to-market,” investors demand “capital efficiency”—everyone chooses “convenience” over “fault tolerance.”

Until “convenience” is no longer convenient.

Why Do Decentralized Alternatives “Get Cheers but No Audience”?

Decentralized storage (like Arweave), distributed file transfer (IPFS), decentralized computing (Akash), decentralized hosting (Filecoin) do exist.

But they face issues such as:

• Performance lagging behind centralized solutions, with latency perceptible to users
• Extremely low adoption, complicated usage processes
• Costs often higher than leasing infrastructure from the big three cloud providers

Building truly decentralized infrastructure is extremely difficult—far beyond imagination.

Most projects only pay lip service to “decentralization,” rarely implementing it in practice. Choosing centralized solutions remains simpler and cheaper—until failures happen.

New Regulatory Challenges

Three major failures within 30 days have attracted high regulatory attention:

• Are these companies “systemically important institutions”?
• Should backbone network services be regulated as “public utilities”?
• What risks arise when “too big to fail” merges with critical infrastructure?
• Does Cloudflare’s control of 20% of global internet traffic constitute a monopoly?

The US Treasury is pushing to embed identity credentials into smart contracts, requiring KYC for every DeFi interaction. When the next infrastructure failure occurs, users will lose not just trading access but also the ability to “prove their identity” within the financial system.

A three-hour outage could turn into three hours of “inability to pass CAPTCHA”—simply because the verification service runs on the failed infrastructure.

From “Convenience” to “Necessity”: When Will the Turning Point Come?

November 18, the crypto industry did not “fail”—the blockchain itself operated perfectly.

The real “failure” is the industry’s collective self-deception:

• Thinking they can build “unstoppable applications” on “crushable infrastructure”
• Believing that when three companies control “access channels,” “censorship resistance” still matters
• Assuming that when a single configuration file from Cloudflare can determine whether millions can trade, “decentralization” still has meaning

Infrastructure resilience should not be an “optional bonus,” but the fundamental requirement that underpins everything—without it, all other functions are moot.

The next failure is brewing—possibly from AWS, possibly from Azure, possibly from Google Cloud, or a second failure of Cloudflare. It could happen next month or next week.

Choosing centralized solutions remains cheaper, faster, more convenient—until it’s no longer the case.

When Cloudflare’s next routine configuration change triggers a hidden vulnerability in a critical service, we will witness the familiar scene again: endless 500 errors, halted trading, blockchain running normally but inaccessible, corporate promises of “doing better next time” that are never fulfilled.

This is the current industry dilemma: nothing will change because “convenience” always wins over “risk prevention”—until the day when the cost of “convenience” becomes too great to ignore.