RE: Poloniex put out a press release about their poor performance lately - I call bullshit
aws wouldn't scale your app on fly with some clicks. You should "write code" to make it scalable and there are many challenges that are not easily fixable while you have a very sensitive data store that cannot be out of sync even a mili second. Pushing code in such a system is a very slow process that requires many tests to make sure a programming mistake is not costing millions of dollars in loss for the company.
People don't know that there are hackers out there with thousands of botnet power and if they can use it for money they can stop any service out there. It happened many times to giants like Google and Microsoft and if they are not a target anymore it's because there is no gain in it. If they can make millions of dollars, they can easily bring your servers down.
so you're saying they didn't know this to make it scalable from the start and also, they are the only ones facing these challenges while other exchanges are just fine?
I appreciate your comment and a diligent process indeed needs to be taken into consideration to mitigate all risks but the user boom didn't happen overnight, they have been at the top of the traded volume for months now. You're telling me they didn't see this coming? I doubt it.
First of all these challenges are unique to each company and required world class engineering teams to solve them. Startups don't have access to that level of knowledge and experience in the beginning.
Yes they are the only exchange under this type of attacks, the volume of exchanges in Poloniex is 10 to 11 times more than the second exchange Bittrex and they have a much more responsive API which makes it easier to obtain CPU process from attackers.
I can't believe you can sustain such a thing. Man, in the past 24h Poloniex had a trading volume of 522 million USD. They make about 0.4% fee for every trade which, at that trading amount is over 2 million USD. Are you seriously going to say that with that amount of dough: 1. they are a startup and 2. they don't have access to high level of knowledge?
Let me say this again: Customer Service is not responding to customer e-mails for 7-8 days at a time. Are you seriously saying they can't afford to get an army of Customer Service agents to at least answer customer e-mails within minutes?? tf dude? c'mon!
Where did you get that fee? Poloniex make 0.15% for every maker trade and 0.25% on every taker trade. Even so, making money doesn't automatically put you out of startup phase, Uber makes much more and is still a startup. No matter how much money you have in US, as long as you are not in Silicon Valley and have a reputable name you'r not gonna have access to google level senior devs.
Also at this point customer service is just a pain in the ass for engineering. They cannot understand the system and should ask many questions and a tech company shouldn't waste money on more people to respond emails. What's the point of responding when there are technical issues unresolved?
The fees are charged for both the seller and the buyer (average 0.2% per side of every trade based on my research) so you need to double it. Nevertheless, they are making a ton of money on a daily basis, even if it is lower than what I said above, it's still at least 1 million USD. Does that look like change to you?
Let's be honest here for a second. They are producing software. It's not like they need factories and thousands of people and paying for materials etc. Software. Comes out of developers minds through computers. How much overhead would you need to produce high quality software? With one million USD on their hands on a daily basis they can get the brightest minds in the friggin world to create their software and develop the technology. The problem is they don't. And that's shitting on your customers.
I agree that maybe even half that money goes on insurances, servers, security, legal stuff etc. but you're still left with a crapton of money so there's no excuse.
Also, on a side note as you clearly don't know what dealing with customers is, what Customer Experience is. Being there for your customers alleviates their concerns, even if there are issues, even if the technology is not where is should be, being there and communicating transparently with your customers is key to retain them and continue to cash in that daily million.
a sell and a buy from two people counts as two trades not one. One sell and one buy, that's simple.
The thing is while you're in the middle of crisis you cannot just look for brightest talent, you just have to cop up with what you got. Maybe they can do better but it's not as simple as you think, they are under huge pressure and I believe they did a great job during last days of huge pump of XRP.
Yes customer service is important but that's not my argument here. They can simply do better but not every company is perfect. All I'm saying is that they don't deserve the critiques they are receiving. They are a revolutionary company and bringing a lot of value to the community. I don't care if they don't send me hi or anything like that.
Their volume is clearly showing they are popular and they have something great on their hands. Is anyone denying that?
Let's also make a difference between poor, good and great companies. Good companies don't see the ways out while great companies benefit from sinkholes and rise higher than they were before. Polo has failed here. Their crisis is around for a long time. What stops the average user from thinking that if Polo wasn't able to take care of their scalability, how can I trust them on the security side? Or on the fairness side?
There's exodus from POlo everywhere I look.
Your quotes:
You can't separate them. Polo is offering a service. All Polo users are customers. Tech and CX need to work hand in hand.
Wrong. This is the most important time where you should acknowledge your limitations and accept where you can't raise the bar to meet the expectations. This is the most important moment to look for help from specialists. Especially when you have the means to do it (brand and finances). If you fail here, you fail bad and have no future. Relying only on what you got is a mistake.
There is no excuse in my books for what is happening with Polo.