Why Bamboo app went down during Dangote Refinery IPO – CEO

Bamboo, a platform managing subscriptions for the Dangote Refinery IPO, faced service interruptions within the first 30 minutes of the IPO opening due to an unprecedented surge in traffic. However, CEO Richmond Bassey revealed that third-party service provider failures and timeouts also contributed to the disruption. Bamboo had scaled its infrastructure to handle up to five times its usual traffic, but the traffic load quickly surpassed this capacity.

Users began reporting issues accessing their accounts shortly after the IPO began on September 14. Bamboo later acknowledged the disruption and promised to restore services. The CEO explained that various transaction processes, such as OTP generation, account creation, password resets, deposits, and KYC, rely on external infrastructure and were affected by the third-party service provider failures.

These problems led Cloudflare to throttle a significant portion of Bamboo's traffic. The disruption affected other digital investment platforms as well, with Cowrywise reporting slower response times. The incident underscores the risks associated with interconnected financial platforms, as a company's resilience often depends on the capacity of the businesses and service providers linked to it.