Wallet software platform Exodus suspended exchange features for bitcoin trading pairs over the weekend, after a rush to bitcoin cash caused major congestion. In a public letter to its customers, the company explains why the decision was made and the changes going forward.
Also read: Exodus Integrates Bitcoin Cash Into Their Multi-Asset Wallet
Exodus Suspends Feature for BTC Trading Pairs
Torsten Sandor, Chief Communications Officer (CCO) for Exodus explained, “We believe in 100% openness and transparency. We are posting this statement on Medium, so you can add your thoughts. We are here, we are listening, and we want to make this right.”
In three days time, bitcoin cash went on a tear. It’s price skyrocketed, causing many to either sell their existing coins or purchase them anew. In either case, it meant a major headache for Exodus.
“The parabolic rise of Bitcoin Cash had a serious impact on the Bitcoin network,” the company claimed. “Seeing the price surge, many of the miners abandoned the Bitcoin network and started mining Bitcoin Cash. BTC transactions were grinding to a halt. Bitcoin transactions normally take 5–20 minutes to go through, but this weekend we’ve seen transaction times up to 12 hours.”
Many analysts concluded the inverse relationship between bitcoin’s price fall over that period and bitcoin cash’s rise were both due to the pending Bitcoin hard fork being called off.
“Normally about 20% of miners work on Bitcoin Cash and 80% on Bitcoin,” the letter continued, “but this weekend BCH had more than two-thirds of the mining power. At the time of writing this update, there are still 135,000 unconfirmed transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain, about five to ten times the usual. This is the second worst Bitcoin network congestion of 2017,” the letter stressed.
The letter explains, “As the Bitcoin network slowed down dramatically, we started seeing these exchanges fail, and at the height of the congestion, one-third of all exchanges were unsuccessful.”
Suspension of their app’s exchange trading pairs, according to the company, happened at 6:40 UTC on 12 November 2017 due to “exchanges failing at an unacceptable rate.”
The Decision and its Consequences
Exorbitant transaction fees weren’t helping the company’s margins either.
Exodus “received over 1500 support tickets over the weekend, about 2 weeks’ worth.” They were able to recover somewhere around 60 percent of requests with “341 tickets unanswered, and 198 tickets where the solution has not been reached yet,” as of this writing.
At this point, customers wanted to be sure their money wasn’t caught in some kind of blockchain hell, unable to be recovered. Exodus assures that their decision to suspend averted such a disaster.
The company pledges to contact each customer impacted within two days. Also, “In the next 24 hours, we will deliberately use transaction boosting services to accelerate your transactions. We cover all related costs,” they wrote.
Going forward, the company plans to hire more engineers, add surge pricing warnings, and offer more exchange options.
“We know many of you feel Exodus has failed you at this crucial moment. We truly apologize.”
What do you think of Exodus’ predicament? Tell us in the comments below!
Images courtesy of: Pixabay, Exodus.
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