Remember that chaotic day on October 10th? Major trading platforms took some serious hits. One of the largest exchanges faced perhaps the worst outage, while a derivatives platform had to auto-deleverage countless positions—open interest still hasn't recovered to pre-crash levels.

The numbers tell the story: Ethereum network fees skyrocketed past $1,000 per transaction. Even Layer 2 solutions weren't safe, with gas costs hovering around $40. Compare that to Solana's median fees during the same period—the performance gap was staggering.

This infrastructure stress test revealed which chains can actually handle extreme volatility. When billions are moving in minutes, transaction costs become make-or-break for traders.