Always up: how Alchemy handled the biggest crypto liquidation in history

On October 10, 2025, crypto markets experienced the largest liquidation event in history: over $19 billion in leveraged positions unwound across major exchanges over the course of 24 hours. Despite record trading volume and network congestion, we delivered 99.99% uptime when it mattered most.

Why infrastructure reliability matters

When building financial applications, prediction markets, DeFi protocols, or any mission-critical app, your infrastructure isn't just a backend detail; it's your foundation for success.

During high-stakes moments like the October 10, infrastructure reliability becomes your competitive advantage. Apps built on rock-solid infrastructure stay online, process transactions, and serve users, building the trust that drives long-term growth. While many apps struggled with infrastructure challenges, those built on Alchemy stayed online and served users seamlessly through the October 10 volatility.

Reliability isn’t given, it’s something our team fights for 24/7/365. The AWS outage on October 20 was another reminder of why reliable infrastructure is mission-critical for every builder. This is what we strive to deliver every day, not just during stress tests, but as the foundation that powers your app's growth.

What happened on october 10, 2025?

The crypto market experienced unprecedented volatility when President Trump announced a proposed 100% tariff on Chinese imports. Within hours, over $19 billion in leveraged positions were liquidated, marking the largest single-day event in crypto history.

For blockchain infrastructure, this created the unexpected storm: massive traffic spikes, extreme price movements, and millions of users simultaneously hitting apps.

This was the ultimate stress test of what infrastructure can really handle.

How our infrastructure performed

While crypto faced widespread infrastructure challenges, Alchemy maintained its industry-leading reliability:

• Highest uptime across the industry, while others experienced hour-long outages 
• Latency remained fast and consistent all weekend 
• Seamless scaling to handle traffic surges without manual intervention

The architecture behind our reliability

Our performance is the result of architectural decisions we've been making for over 8 years. Every layer of our stack is built to deliver unwavering reliability when apps need it most.

1. Intelligent blockchain engine

Cortex intelligently adapts to diverse traffic patterns and seamlessly scales to meet demand. Combined with optimized bare-metal servers, this enables consistently high throughput, low latency, and resilient availability without the limitations of traditional cloud providers.

2. Global modular infrastructure

Our infrastructure spans US East/West, EU, and APAC, giving builders lower latency and built-in redundancy around the world. When one region experiences stress, traffic automatically reroutes to maintain performance.

3. AI-driven operations

Our system autonomously maintains and updates over 3,000 nodes. Machine learning models continuously optimize every request path for speed and efficiency. This automation means we can respond to issues at machine speed, not human speed.

4. Purpose-built for scale

Our system is architected with more than enough capacity to handle peak traffic, and it automatically scales based on demand. During sudden market volatility, extra capacity kicks in immediately—processing every request quickly and without issue.

The result: 99.99% uptime across 80+ supported networks, proven under the most extreme conditions.

Real-world performance: Polymarket at scale

We have a consistent track record of delivering reliable infrastructure.

During the 2024 U.S. Presidential election, Polymarket processed $3.3 billion in bets with 125,000 concurrent users, at one point handling** 20% of all transactions on the Polygon network**. Not a single transaction failed due to infrastructure.

We scaled seamlessly with their traffic through intelligent infrastructure optimization:

• Tuned transaction broadcasters to increase propagation and reduce time-to-mine
• Deployed fast network routes optimized for their specific workload
• Dynamically rerouted requests based on p99 latency to boost performance
• Maintained dedicated monitoring with customized alerts for critical events
• Spun up additional dedicated node fleets to ensure top-tier performance for both reads and writes

When Cortex rolled out across our platform, Polymarket saw immediate improvements:

• Latency for critical workflows sped up 2.5x from ~250ms to ~100ms
• Snappier UX for users across the globe
• 99.99% reliability across all regions

"Working with Alchemy has been nothing short of essential," said Rodrigo, Polymarket's Head of Platform. "The personal support, the quick turnaround on our feature asks, and the attention to our scale—Alchemy consistently goes above and beyond. They're not just an infra provider. They're part of our team."

Built for your biggest moments

70% of top onchain apps are powered by Alchemy, from Visa and Robinhood to Polymarket and World. We help every app succeed onchain with a suite of developer tools that allows you to ship production-ready apps in minutes.

• Connect reliably with our enterprise-grade Node RPC and Websockets infrastructure
• Simplify authentication and transacting with Smart Wallets that eliminate seed phrases and gas fees for your users
• Engage users with rich historical and real-time data delivered through our Webhooks and Token APIs
• Grow revenue at scale by launching your own chain and capturing more revenue with dedicated Rollups

Powered by Cortex, we take care of the hard infrastructure challenges so you can focus on building and shipping experiences that make you shine. When it’s your reputation on the line, we make sure your app always delivers—helping you earn trust, delight users, and grow with confidence.

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Ready to build on infrastructure you can trust? Get your API key and start shipping today. For enterprise-grade support and custom scaling solutions, talk to our team.

Frequently asked questions

What happened on October 10, 2025, in crypto?

On October 10, 2025, crypto markets experienced the largest liquidation event in history, with over $19 billion in leveraged positions unwound across major exchanges over 24 hours following President Trump's announcement of a proposed 100% tariff on Chinese imports.

Did Alchemy experience any downtime during the October 10 liquidation event?

No, we delivered 99.99% uptime across over 80 supported networks while maintaining fast and consistent latency despite record trading volumes and infrastructure challenges across the industry.

How did we handle the massive traffic surge on October 10?

Our infrastructure scaled seamlessly and automatically without manual intervention through our purpose-built system with excess capacity that activates based on demand, intelligently adapting through Cortex and global modular infrastructure.

What makes our blockchain infrastructure reliable during market volatility?

Our reliability comes from our Intelligent Blockchain Engine (Cortex), global modular infrastructure spanning multiple regions, AI-driven operations managing over 3,000 nodes, and purpose-built architecture designed to handle peak traffic automatically.

How did we perform compared to other providers during the October 10 event?

We maintained the highest uptime across the industry with 99.99% reliability, while many other infrastructure providers experienced hour-long outages during the same period.

What is an example of Alchemy handling extreme traffic at scale?

During the 2024 U.S. Presidential election, Polymarket processed $3.3 billion in bets with 125,000 concurrent users and handled 20% of all Polygon network transactions without a single transaction failure due to infrastructure.

Why does infrastructure reliability matter for crypto applications?

During high-stakes moments like the October 10 liquidation event, reliable infrastructure becomes a competitive advantage, allowing apps to stay online, process transactions, and serve users seamlessly while building the trust that drives long-term growth.