Major Reason Why CBN Postponed The October 1st eNaira Launch

Major Reason Why CBN Postponed The October 1st eNaira Launch

It’s no longer news that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has postponed the launch of eNaira which was scheduled for launch yesterday 1st of  October 2021.

Flippstack understands that the unanticipated surge in visits on the website of the Central Bank’s eNaira initiative has led to the sudden postponement of the launch of the apex bank’s digital currency dubbed “eNaira.” The surge led to a recalibration of the number of potential users, which the bank now believes could be ten times more than earlier expected soon after the launch.

This huge number of traffic to the website made the bank decide to postpone the launch in order to recheck and retest the robustness, safety, scalability, and security of the eNaira system.

According to report, The eNaira website recorded about 480,000 hits the first day it went live. The visits grew to over 1.7 million the next day and have averaged over 2.8 million hits daily since then. Apart from attracting hits, the website has also recorded a surge in usage with the time spent on the site generating the content of over 80 GB daily. Nairametrics understands this required that the apex bank conduct another stress test on its systems to ensure it is capable of withstanding a further surge in traffic when they go live.

The apex bank seems to have learned from the botched launch of Obamacare which was coincidentally launched on the 1st of October 2013. Back then, the website was unable to consistently handle 500 users at once in the testing phase, and tests failed with 2,000 users over a three-day period, according to a Reuters report at the time. Engineers conducted performance tests just before launch and the results pointed to capacity issues that could affect a smooth experience on the launch date. Yet they proceeded, embarrassing President Obama.

To sidestep a similar fate, Nigeria’s central bank decided to postpone the launch until they have assurances that their system has the right capacity to withstand a surge in visits.

Major Reason Why CBN Postponed The October 1st eNaira Launch