Coinbase Overwhelmed by Demand for Solana Withdrawals

In a historic week for the crypto world, memecoin launches from U.S. President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump plunged the network into chaos.

Amidst unprecedented load, hundreds of Solana users have had difficulty landing transactions due to network congestion and all-time high priority fees.

Meanwhile, Coinbase is struggling to process its customer’s $SOL withdrawals, triggering FTX survivors’ lingering trauma.

Estimated Withdrawal Time: 9 Hours

The recent $TRUMP memecoin launch changed the crypto space forever. Hundreds of thousands of traders have bought cryptocurrency for the first time ever, with Solana witnessing billions in onchain liquidity inflows.

Coinbase, one of the industry’s most popular exchanges, has been completely blindsided by demand for involvement in Solana DeFi. Since the launch of Trump’s sensational memecoin, Coinbase users have been pulling $SOL out of the exchange en masse, resulting in the complete suspension of $SOL withdrawals.

Customers are reporting wait times of over 9 hours, reminding fearful customers of the devastating FTX insolvency of November 2022.

Beyond concerning withdrawal times, Coinbase appears unable to process Solana-based deposits. Users reported processing times of 1,061 minutes. Compounding Coinbase’s embarrassment, the exchange is referring to Solana-based tokens as SLP-20s, likely confusing the network’s token standard with Ethereum’s native ERC-20.

Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong has done little to alleviate customer concerns. Prominent figures in the crypto space are now swearing off the exchange entirely, with Armstrong simply affirming that the exchange was not anticipating “lots of Solana activity” and was working on scaling its Solana infrastructure.

Social media commentators are now speculating that Coinbase’s Solana reserves have been completely emptied. Fortunately, onchain data suggests this isn’t true. 

According to SolScan, the Coinbase 1 wallet still holds over 664k $SOL, currently valued at over $156M.

Coinbase Engineer Admits Exchange Must Improve

This is far from the first time that Coinbase has failed to optimize its infrastructure to support surges in Solana demand. In November 2024, Coinbase representatives insinuated that “SOL was slow on its own”, after suffering delayed withdrawals, despite the network running uninhibited at the time.

While Solana users claim the exchange is deliberately hampering its Solana performance to undermine the chain and promote its native blockchain, Coinbase Protocol Specialist Andrew has admitted that the exchange needs to do better.

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