Report on the Temporary Slowdown of BTC Processing

This past Friday, one of the nodes crucial to Bitcoin exchange functionality on ChangeNOW temporarily stopped working. It caused the slowdown of the transaction processing. Once we were able to identify the problem, we switched to a backup node that, unfortunately, did not have the capacity to operate at the same rate as the original. While working with this node, we were able to activate a third reserve node and once we did that, service became fully operational again. 

It has long been our policy at ChangeNOW to be as transparent as we can be with our clients as long as that does not affect our or their security. In the interest of transparency, we want to make it clear that the problem was on our end. The node compromising service quality and thus slowing transaction speed down was something that we didn’t catch on time, and even though we had a backup ready to go, which we immediately deployed, it was not adequate for the task at hand. We would like to sincerely apologize if the change in service affected any of our customers, this is the last thing that we would want. 

At ChangeNOW we pride ourselves on being able to give our clients exceptional service around the clock. While Friday’s episode was certainly a setback, the result of the node unavailability was a transaction speed slowdown that we were able to address and correct within a short amount of time. Now, having righted the ship, we are concentrating all of our resources on making sure that nothing like this happens again: adding more node backups and scaling existing node capacity are our top priorities here. 

It is, in a way, a blessing that this happened on such a small scale because now we will be thoroughly prepared for anything thrown our way. In order to ensure that a slowdown like this does not occur again, we are adding a number of additional reserve nodes that will be able to handle full transaction load of the exchange without fail. We are also updating our monitoring policies to make sure that should a similar situation arise, we will be in a position to prevent any service disruptions. We would also like to reiterate that ChangeNOW is currently 100% operational and there are no lingering effects caused by what happened on Friday. 

Now more than ever, ChangeNOW is devoted to providing the best user experience around. We would like to thank you, our clients, for sticking through this with us. We will more than make it up to you. 

For everybody that was affected by the slowdown of transaction processing, please send tickets with the transactions in question to support. We will be more than happy to assist you with any problems that you may be having. In view of what happened, we will also be offering improved exchange rates to the customers whose Bitcoin operations were stuck in the time period between 10.40 and 23.59 (UTC) on Friday August 6th. Please note that distribution of improved rates will start on August 20th the earliest. 

Thank you for your patience and understanding!

The ChangeNOW Team