Key Takeaways:
Morpho's web app and API went offline for about three hours on July 16 after an Amazon CloudFront failure, the second-largest onchain lending network said.
"All Morpho services are back and stable," Julien Thomas, principal engineer at Morpho, said. "Performance may still be impacted but the app and the api are functioning."
The outage struck app.morpho.org and api.morpho.org, preventing borrowers and lenders from accessing the protocol's interface. AWS reported that between 12:45 AM and 4:18 AM PDT, CloudFront customers using VPC Origins experienced 5xx errors after the system that pushes routing configuration to network processors reached its internal capacity limit. Morpho's onchain lending contracts continued operating independently during the disruption, with no loss of user funds reported.
The incident highlights how DeFi protocols remain dependent on centralized web infrastructure for user interfaces and data delivery. Morpho, which reported more than $11 billion in deposits when it raised $175 million in June in a round co-led by Paradigm, a16z crypto and Ribbit, now holds about $7.33 billion in total value locked across Ethereum and Base, according to DefiLlama.
Other services affected by the same CloudFront failure included the AI platform Hugging Face, the UK's National Lottery and Bethesda's Fallout 76, Amazon said. The trading platform tradesea said it shipped a workaround to keep its web platform online, containing the downtime to its mobile app.
Morpho's infrastructure has expanded across several large crypto platforms. Coinbase uses Morpho for USDC lending products, with Steakhouse Financial managing vault allocations. Hardware wallet provider Trezor integrated Morpho vaults into Trezor Suite, giving users access to USDC and USDT lending strategies. Apollo Global Management agreed to a structure that could see its affiliates acquire up to 90 million MORPHO tokens over 48 months as part of a wider relationship with the protocol.
The distinction between frontend and onchain operations matters for users. A website becoming unavailable does not mean assets stored in onchain contracts have disappeared, though disruptions to interfaces can temporarily make it harder to view positions or interact with protocols through their standard websites. Neither Morpho nor AWS has published a full incident report tying specific user impact to the CloudFront failure.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
