The massive Cloudflare outage causes widespread disruptions across the Internet, taking down platforms including X (Twitter), ChatGPT, YouTube, and Zoom.
Several multiplayer games were also affected in one of the most devastating infrastructure incidents of the year.
Cloudflare collapse: Why is half the Internet going dark?
Cloudflare confirmed on Tuesday that it is “aware of and investigating the issue that will likely impact multiple customers.”
“Cloudflare is aware of and investigating the issue that has the potential to impact multiple customers. More details will be provided as more information becomes available.”
The company initially reported progress toward recovery, but quickly returned to saying it was still investigating the root cause.
What users see
Across affected sites, visitors encountered errors generated by Cloudflare such as:
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500 Internal Server Error
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“Please unblock Challenge.cloudflare.com to continue.”
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“Sorry, you’ve been blocked.”
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API and dashboard failed
In many cases, the warnings implied security threats or blocked access, but were simply the result of Cloudflare’s systems failing.
The Downdetector outage tracker, which typically provides real-time visibility into disruptions, has been removed, leaving users unable to verify the failure or its location.
When the site briefly loaded, it showed a massive increase in outage reports across several major platforms.
The global bottleneck of the Internet
Cloudflare powers the core infrastructure of thousands of companies, from cybersecurity layers to traffic routing. This makes it one of the most important core providers on the modern web.
The outage follows the AWS incident last month, highlighting the fragility of the internet’s central infrastructure.
Cloudflare scheduled maintenance today for its Santiago Data Center (SCL), although it has not been confirmed whether this played a role.
Platforms affected so far include:
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Gaming services that rely on Cloudflare APIs
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Many small sites with Cloudflare protection enabled
Some users also reported other Google services loading intermittently.
Industry voices point to a larger trend: DePIN
In early reactions, many analysts noted that such outages highlight the growing state of decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePINs), systems designed to eliminate single points of failure in global internet operations.
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao highlighted that during the downtime, blockchain technology continued uninterrupted.
https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1990783657586668032?s=20
Affected users do not need to troubleshoot their devices, but will have to wait. The problem lies at the upstream, and the platforms will regain functionality once Cloudflare stabilizes its network.
This story is evolving.
Read the original story Cloudflare bug shuts down web, reveals why DePIN is inevitable By Lockridge Okoth V beincrypto.com
