A major outage on Amazon Web Services (AWS) on October 20 sent shockwaves across the internet, taking down a wide range of platforms — from gaming and education apps to online banking systems and even non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces.
The large-scale disruption, which affected several AWS data centers, left millions of users unable to access popular services such as Fortnite, Duolingo, and multiple financial applications. According to DownDetector, more than eight million reports were logged during the incident, making it one of the most widespread outages in recent months.
However, one of the more unusual ripple effects came from the NFT community, where collectors temporarily lost access to their prized — and often multimillion-dollar — digital assets.
Bored Ape NFTs Go Dark
Among the most affected were owners of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFTs, one of the most famous and high-valued digital collections. The AWS disruption hit storage and indexing services used by NFT marketplaces such as OpenSea, causing NFT images to disappear from user galleries.
Many users were met with blank screens and error messages stating that their NFTs could not be displayed. Screenshots shared online showed notifications reading:
“This ERC-721 NFT is not accessible due to an ongoing Amazon Web Services outage.”
While the tokens themselves remained safely stored on the blockchain, the visual assets — typically hosted on centralized or cloud-linked servers — became temporarily unavailable.
The incident reignited long-standing debates around centralization in the NFT ecosystem, as it revealed that many supposedly “decentralized” digital assets still rely heavily on major tech providers for hosting and metadata storage.
OpenSea Issues Apology
Chris Maddern, Chief Product Officer at OpenSea, addressed the issue publicly on X (formerly Twitter), confirming that several “upstream providers” integral to OpenSea’s operations had been affected by the AWS crash.
“opensea.io is currently up; however, a number of upstream providers that power parts of OpenSea (including data storage and blockchain indexing) are experiencing significant outages due to the AWS incident,” Maddern wrote.
He added that for several hours, OpenSea experienced “intermittent availability” and a “higher-than-usual failure rate,” acknowledging user frustration.
“We hate it when OpenSea isn’t rock solid for you, and we’re doing all we can to bring us back to normal operations as soon as possible,” Maddern said.
The outage affected NFT visibility across various marketplaces and wallet apps that rely on AWS for image hosting or metadata retrieval, though blockchain records confirming ownership and transaction history were never compromised.
A Wake-Up Call for Web3 Infrastructure
The brief disappearance of high-value NFTs, including those from Bored Ape Yacht Club and other top collections, has reignited discussions about the vulnerability of Web3 platforms that still depend on centralized cloud systems for functionality.
While blockchain networks like Ethereum ensure the immutability of token ownership, the media files and metadata linked to NFTs often reside on third-party servers, including AWS and IPFS gateways. This structure means that even though the asset exists on-chain, its display and accessibility can still be disrupted by a single point of failure.
Industry analysts noted that the incident could push more developers and marketplaces toward fully decentralized storage solutions, such as Arweave or Filecoin, which are designed to prevent exactly this type of disruption.
Service Restored, But Questions Remain
By late October 20, AWS engineers reported that most affected systems had been restored, and platforms like OpenSea confirmed normal operations were resuming. However, for NFT collectors — many of whom have invested millions of dollars in digital art — the temporary loss of access to their assets served as a stark reminder of the fragile balance between decentralization and convenience in the Web3 era.
The outage also highlighted a broader reality: despite blockchain’s promise of independence from centralized infrastructure, the digital ecosystem remains deeply intertwined with a handful of tech giants whose services underpin much of the internet — and, by extension, much of Web3.
