From Outage to Autonomy The Push for True End to End Decentralisation in Blockchain

By Spectrum Search

Cloudflare Outage Exposes Centralization Weak Points Across Crypto Platforms

The blockchain world has long prided itself on its decentralised ethos — yet the recent Cloudflare outage revealed just how entangled many crypto platforms remain with traditional Web2 infrastructure. As decentralised finance (DeFi) platforms grow, experts are now calling for a re-evaluation of what “decentralisation” truly means in practice.

While layer-one blockchains such as Ethereum may run on decentralised networks of validators, several core services that support the user-facing side of blockchain — from APIs to frontends — still rely heavily on centralised servers, cloud storage, and DNS providers. The outage this week, which impacted companies like Blockchain.com, Coinbase, Ledger, BitMEX, Toncoin, DefiLlama, and Arbiscan, demonstrated how those dependencies can bring portions of the cryptocurrency ecosystem to a standstill.

EthStorage and the push for “end-to-end decentralisation”

Among the advocates for change was blockchain infrastructure firm EthStorage, which argued that decentralisation can’t be limited to the blockchain itself. Speaking to industry outlets following the disruption, the platform highlighted what it describes as the industry’s “selective decentralisation syndrome” — the tendency to focus on the consensus layer while still depending on centralised infrastructure above and below it.

“True resilience requires rethinking the entire stack — not just the blockchain layer,” an EthStorage spokesperson said, underscoring the need to decentralise systems including Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs), Domain Name System (DNS), APIs, indexing, and data storage.

This vision of “end-to-end decentralisation” could ultimately mean that protocols continue functioning even if major Web2 providers experience downtime or attacks. The idea mirrors the founding vision of blockchain itself: a distributed system that cannot be shut down by any single point of failure.

Centralised dependencies still dominate

The incident with Cloudflare affected roughly 20% of online traffic, illustrating the concentration of global internet services in the hands of a few key players. Just a month earlier, an Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage caused a similar wave of interruptions, with numerous crypto protocols suddenly finding their frontend interfaces inaccessible.

“Outages like yesterday show how much internet traffic flows through a handful of centralised networks,” said a statement from Filecoin, one of several decentralised storage pioneers responding to the event. “Relying on a single cloud provider limits any society that depends on stable access to data.”

EthStorage, along with Protocol Labs (the creators of IPFS and Filecoin) and Arweave, advocate for the use of decentralised storage networks capable of maintaining availability even when centralised providers fail. Their shared belief is that resilience and censorship-resistance must extend to the full architecture of a web3 application — a challenge that spans everything from hosting smart contracts to serving website content.

Why crypto builders still lean on Web2 infrastructure

Despite the clear philosophical opposition between blockchain decentralisation and Web2 centralisation, many teams continue to rely on traditional infrastructure providers. EthStorage noted that much of this stems from practicality and developer familiarity. It remains quicker and cheaper to deploy and scale frontends using existing cloud platforms, particularly under the pressure to launch and acquire users fast in competitive crypto markets.

“Teams often deprioritise decentralisation because they’re focused on building a smooth launch experience,” EthStorage added. “Since users don’t see the infrastructure underneath, there’s little immediate pressure to decentralise. As a result, decentralisation becomes an ‘optional later step’ rather than a foundational principle.”

The misconception that decentralised alternatives like IPFS or Arweave are slower, costlier, or harder to maintain persists, though projects such as EthStorage aim to counter that perception with more user-friendly decentralised frameworks.

Gradual progress toward full decentralisation

EthStorage emphasised that total decentralisation does not need to be an immediate leap — it can occur progressively. The key, they argue, is intentionality: projects should make decentralisation a roadmap goal from the very beginning rather than treating it as an afterthought.

“Achieving full decentralisation across every layer of the stack doesn’t have to happen overnight,” the spokesperson said. “What matters is that teams align their development plans with this direction — gradually phasing out centralised dependencies across execution, storage, and access as their protocol evolves.”

Such long-term thinking could ensure that when incidents like the Cloudflare outage occur again — and in a globally interconnected internet, they inevitably will — decentralised platforms can withstand the shock without compromising accessibility or trust.

Vitalik Buterin urges builders: “Never sacrifice decentralisation”

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin echoed that sentiment in a recent essay titled the “Trustless Manifesto,” published just last week. He asserted that blockchain builders must never compromise decentralisation for convenience or faster adoption, warning that each centralised integration — from hosted nodes to centralised relayers — weakens the overall trustlessness of the ecosystem.

Buterin’s warning is timely. As blockchain technology matures, many teams are racing to scale, onboard users, and meet regulatory expectations. But decentralisation, he argued, must remain non-negotiable — not only for ideological reasons, but also as a practical safeguard for the health of the broader crypto landscape.

The Ethereum Foundation has long championed developer tools that reduce reliance on intermediaries, from smart contract audit frameworks to decentralised hosting. Projects like Filecoin, Arweave and EthStorage operate in the same spirit, reinforcing Buterin’s core message: the integrity of the web3 movement depends on its resistance to capture or collapse.

Recruiting for a decentralised future

This paradigm shift has implications far beyond technology — it directly influences demand in the crypto recruitment and blockchain recruitment sectors. As more organisations strive toward decentralised system design, talent with expertise in distributed storage, open protocols, cybersecurity, and decentralised networking is becoming invaluable.

At Spectrum Search, we’ve observed a sharp growth in demand for professionals who understand the interplay between blockchain architecture and cloud infrastructure. Web3 companies seeking long-term resilience are increasingly keen to hire engineers, DevOps specialists, and designers who can build using decentralised tools from the ground up. This mirrors a growing hiring trend visible after events such as the 2023–2024 wave of major crypto outages, where firms responded by prioritising internal security and redundancy.

For a web3 recruitment agency like Spectrum Search, this evolving landscape signals a major opportunity. Organisations that take decentralisation seriously from both a technical and human perspective — recruiting the right blockchain talent to manage distributed systems — stand to emerge as the most trusted pillars of the next digital era.

Bridging worlds: from Web2 dependency to Web3 autonomy

As the blockchain community rethinks its architecture, the recent wave of internet outages may serve as the wake-up call needed to modernise and strengthen the decentralised ecosystem. EthStorage’s concept of end-to-end decentralisation challenges teams to evolve: to move beyond simple node diversity and toward resilience across storage, presentation, and access layers.

Projects that successfully achieve that vision will not only shield themselves from Web2 disruptions — they’ll also realise blockchain’s founding ideal of independence from central authority. The same philosophy that transformed finance with DeFi could reshape the very way we architect the internet itself — building an infrastructure that truly belongs to its users.

But for that evolution to occur, the industry must invest not just in technology, but in people — developers, security engineers, and innovators who are fluent in decentralised systems. As the crypto recruitment agency trusted by leading projects, Spectrum Search understands that delivering on blockchain’s promise requires both decentralised code and decentralised thinking — an approach that starts, fittingly, with the talent we hire.