TL;DR
- Throughout the worst moments of the biggest quantity spike our platform had ever seen (in July 2025), about 11% of requests to our platform failed. That was unacceptable. We now run at an error fee of 0.111%, whereas carrying greater than ten instances the load.
- We set a regular for load testing: the platform has to outlive at the very least twice the heaviest load now we have ever dealt with in manufacturing, on demand, each time we check for it.
- Kraken sustains greater than 230,000 profitable requests per second in manufacturing, throughout 5 separate full-scale exams with zero incidents.
- On February 5, 2026, one of many sharpest selloffs of previous twelve months, each main service held with no incidents.
Peak demand is the one actual check
No buying and selling platform is judged on a median Tuesday. It’s judged on the day Bitcoin units a document, or the day a token sale opens and everybody arrives in the identical minute. These are the moments that inform you what a platform can really carry.
The standard and stability of our platform is the product.
In mid-July 2025, Bitcoin broke by way of $120,000 for the primary time, a part of a rally that carried it above $123,000 inside days. On Kraken, roughly 135,500 shoppers hit errors throughout that window, about 40,000 of them whereas funding an account. On the worst moments, round 11% of requests failed outright.
Three months later, the primary token providing on Kraken Launch noticed someplace between 60% and 80% of energetic periods drop for 2 and a half hours. Even after issues stabilized we had been nonetheless dropping a couple of third of requests throughout visitors spikes.
Over the previous 12 months we modified how we check for load, so we discover these limits ourselves as a substitute of discovering them mid-rally.
Battle video games
The usual we set: the platform needed to survive at the very least twice the heaviest load it has ever dealt with in dwell buying and selling, on demand, each time we select to check it. Double the document, as the ground.
To check towards that we constructed full-scale load exams, recognized internally as battle video games, that throw a manufactured flood of buying and selling exercise at manufacturing methods. It’s mainly a fireplace drill, run on our schedule slightly than the market’s, so we discover the constraints that give approach first and repair them earlier than a shopper ever notices. Capability moved shortly as soon as we might generate the stress on demand.
The markets didn’t look forward to us to complete. In February, crypto skilled one among its sharpest selloffs of the previous 12 months, with a wave of compelled liquidations sending Bitcoin down laborious over a number of days.
Buying and selling exercise and platform load climbed collectively, with request volumes hitting new all-time highs. Each main service continued to run with no incidents. We estimated a full outage that day would have price $719,000 an hour. It stayed an estimate.
Shifting the bar persistently greater
Between July 2025 and June 2026, our peak failure fee fell from round 11% to 0.111%, whereas the load the platform carries went up greater than tenfold.
However we’ve nonetheless bought work to do.
The 2x normal now stands completely. Every time actual shopper exercise units a brand new document on the platform, that document turns into the load we check towards subsequent, so the bar continues to rise with the market.
When a value strikes laborious and everybody jumps into the market on the identical second, the platform must be there.
Coming quickly: In order for you the engineering element, what the exams really do, what broke alongside the best way, and what the crew discovered constructing them, search for our companion put up written for a technical viewers.
