The global AWS outage that left millions of users unable to access online services this week has revived industry warnings about the fragility of today’s highly centralized internet infrastructure. Developers and founders across the decentralized technology sector say the incident shows how deeply dependent the web has become on a few dominant providers and why that concentration poses systemic risks.
According to Downdetector, more than 1,000 companies were affected, with over 6.5 million outage reports logged globally, including one million from the U.S., 400,000 in the U.K., and 200,000 in Australia. Major platforms such as Snapchat, Roblox, Signal, and Duolingo were disrupted, along with Amazon-owned services including its retail marketplace and the Ring doorbell network. In Britain, banks such as Lloyds, Halifax, and Bank of Scotland experienced downtime, while users also reported problems accessing the HM Revenue and Customs website.
Structural Problems in Internet Architecture
Industry engineers argue that the event underscores a structural problem: the modern web’s reliance on a handful of centralized coordination layers that control data flows and application uptime.
Speaking with Yellow.com, Sam Mason de Caires, Director of Engineering at Syndicate, said, “The AWS outage isn’t an isolated event—it’s a consequence of how the modern internet is built and the incentive models that have been constructed. We’ve concentrated control into a handful of centralized coordination layers that determine how data moves, how applications run, and ultimately, whether they stay online.” He added that Syndicate’s work aims to reverse this concentration of power. “Instead of value and control flowing up to a few infrastructure monopolies, Syndicate makes it economically possible for communities to own and operate their own networks and, over time, their own infrastructure.”
Decentralization as a Resilience Solution
In the decentralized finance sector, the incident was seen as a reminder of the contrast between traditional cloud systems and blockchain-based architectures that distribute risk.
“The AWS outage is a clear proof point for why decentralized financial rails exist—resilience by design,” said Merlin Egalite, Co-Founder of Morpho. “Traditional systems can be halted by a single point of failure, while DeFi networks like Morpho continue operating. This is a reminder that DeFi’s purpose isn’t speculation, it’s building financial infrastructure that remains accessible when everything else isn’t," Egalite added.
The Interconnectedness of Global Applications
The disruption also highlighted how interlinked global applications have become, and how a single cloud failure can cascade through thousands of systems within minutes. David Minarsch, Founding Member of Olas and CEO of Valory, noted that “centralised infrastructure has achieved global reach and performance, yet its concentration means that a single technical fault can affect millions simultaneously.” He warned that as AI agents increasingly execute financial and operational decisions autonomously, “the need for distributed continuity becomes urgent.” According to Minarsch, resilience now depends on “distributing coordination, computation, and recovery across networks” so that systems can “maintain continuity under stress, where intelligent agents can keep operating even when individual components fail.”
Renewed Calls for a Resilient Digital Backbone
The outage, which rippled across sectors from retail to finance, has renewed discussion on how to design a more resilient digital backbone, one where decentralization is not a philosophy, but a necessary safeguard for a networked world that can’t afford to go dark.