Paradex faces outages, rollback, and user concerns

Paradex suffered outages and a chain rollback after technical failures led to mass liquidations, cancelled orders, and user frustration over reliability and transparency.

Paradex, a decentralized perpetual futures exchange on Starknet, recently suffered a series of major technical failures. On March 21, 2025, a significant outage halted most platform operations, forcing the cancellation of all open orders and highlighting the challenges of maintaining secure, uninterrupted trading. The disruption affected the user interface, cloud infrastructure, and core blockchain systems, leaving traders unable to access accounts or manage positions. Following database maintenance, an error caused perpetual futures prices to drop to zero, triggering widespread liquidations. In response, Paradex rolled back the chain to the last correct state to restore user accounts and positions, though most open orders were cancelled. This rollback, a rare move in blockchain projects, undermined user trust and caused frustration over missed opportunities and abnormal liquidations. Extended maintenance delays further disrupted trading, increased funding rates, and fueled demands for greater transparency and stronger protocols. These events underscore the operational risks and the need for resilient system design in decentralized finance.