Coinbase Under Fire Again as Solana Deposits Are Delayed, Highlighting Recurring Performance Issues

Coinbase, the public crypto exchange with a market capitalization of nearly $74 billion, is once again facing complaints about its services. This time, it's Solana users who are venting their frustrations.

Coinbase is facing complaints once again, this time from Solana users who are experiencing delays in transactions, specifically Solana (SOL) deposits. Despite Solana being known for its fast transactions, users are reporting that this is not the case when dealing with Coinbase.

One user took to Twitter to express their frustration and threaten legal action if the funds are not released promptly.

“Hey @coinbase and @CoinbaseSupport 34 hours this is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen by you guys, I’m starting to get pretty mad . Release the money by the morning or next I’ll be contacting a lawyer ? pic.twitter.com/4S7beJ6cow”

Co-founder of crypto media outlet The Block, Mike Dudas, also highlighted the delays in a tweet.

“Sent two transactions from a solana wallet to coinbase today. First took 6.5 hours to land. Second hasn’t landed in 3 hours. Coinbase says the future of crypto is on-chain, but they clearly believe on-chain = evm despite solana being the #1 chain by volume. Need to wake up asap”

These complaints are not new for Coinbase, which has a history of technical glitches, especially during periods of increased market activity. Retail investors are often faced with these service disruptions, which tend to occur whenever demand spikes.

For example, in February 2024, when Bitcoin’s price soared past $64,000, Coinbase experienced a major outage. During this period, users reported their account balances displaying as zero and were unable to buy or sell crypto due to system errors. Later, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong attributed the downtime to a surge in traffic that overwhelmed the exchange’s infrastructure.

“We are dealing with a LARGE surge of traffic – apologies for any issues you encounter. The team is working to remediate.”

A month later, Coinbase encountered more technical difficulties. As Solana’s price surged, the exchange faced transaction delays, leaving users to deal with late or canceled SOL deposits. Subsequently, Coinbase revealed it was using machine learning to predict traffic spikes and scale its databases. However, it remains unclear whether this effort has made a substantial difference.

Now, similar issues are resurfacing. However, this time, Andrew Allen, a protocol expert at Coinbase, directly confirmed on Twitter that the delays users are experiencing with Solana deposits are indeed due to the exchange’s infrastructure and not the chain itself.

“Yeah, it’s on us to improve. Not Solana’s fault. Solana usage has pushed our infra past its limits, and the team is well aware and actively working on it.”

In response to the growing complaints, Coinbase Support has released a detailed thread acknowledging the delays and explaining the root cause.

“We’re aware of delays with Solana sends and receives on Coinbase. Your funds are safe and secure. Transparency is key, and we want to share what’s happening and how we’re working to fix it.”

The thread further explained that Coinbase “has seen unprecedented Solana transaction activity,” which is leading to the delays in processing. While the team claims to have improved delays by 30% over the last day, transactions may still take up to 24 hours.

However, the exchange has faced these issues repeatedly in the past. For a multi-billion dollar platform and one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, Coinbase's inability to scale its infrastructure to meet user demands is puzzling. Especially when coupled with multiple complaints about high fees, the company’s repeated technical failures are becoming increasingly difficult to overlook.

Coinbase's mission, as stated on its website, is to “create an open financial system for the world.” The platform claims to make crypto “accessible” to everyone. But for many users, the platform still seems to struggle with handling the basics of crypto transactions when activity surges.

In the case of Solana, it appears that the exchange’s system is simply not prepared for the scale of transactions occurring on the chain.

With Solana being ranked as the top chain by active addresses according to data from DefiLlama, this poses a serious problem for users who are accustomed to expecting instant transactions. Instead, many are being left to wait hours — or even days — for their assets to be transferred.

As Coinbase continues to work on addressing the technical shortcomings that are clearly affecting its users, it might be time to reconsider whether it truly has the infrastructure to support its bold claims about the future of crypto. Until then, the idea of an “open financial system” seems a bit closed off for some users — especially those who expect faster service.