Crypto exchanges freeze ETH withdrawals as Ethereum infrastructure provider Infura is down

Infura announced that it was having service outage issues for Ethereum Mainnet API. The team is investigating the problem as mentioned on the company's website:

We are currently experiencing a service outage for our Ethereum Mainnet API. Our on-call team is investigating and working to restore service functionality. We will post updates here as we have them.

Meanwhile, several cryptocurrency exchanges and wallet providers, including Binance and MetaMask, were forced to suspend ETH withdrawals until the situation clarifies.

The Binance head, Changpeng Zhao, confirmed that the exchange has temporarily blocked ETH withdrawals and assured users that their funds were safe. Zhao also noted that the issue might have been caused by ETH chain split as both Etherscan and Blockchair show two different chains after block 11234873. 

Crypto.com also paused Ethereum and ERC20 deposit and withdrawals citing ETH network issues. 

Social media has exploded with messages from cryptocurrency service providers and users reporting on ETH withdrawals' issues and offering solutions to the situation. One of the widespread ideas is that the exchanges should run their own ETH nodes to avoid dependence on third-party issues. 

However, according to the BitMEX Research team, this may lead to a new problem as exchanges would be forced to suspend withdrawals and investigate if the local chain does not reconcile to a third-party provider.

Meanwhile, Infura posted an update stating that they found the cause of the problem and now are trying to find a solution and restore the services as soon as possible.