Crypto exchange AAX said it had suspended activity, citing a scheduled upgrade that had been delayed by turbulent markets.

The failure of a third-party partner means services will be delayed for as long as 10 days, the Hong Kong-based company said Sunday. The exchange did not identify the partner, and has said it has no exposure to FTX, a rival whose collapse has caused chaos in the industry.

Please consider the AAX announcement Forward Through Adversity.

In light of the insolvency of one of our industry’s largest players last week, crypto users are rightfully concerned about the operational and financial stability of centralized digital asset exchanges. At AAX, we have always put our users first, and here we would like to share with you the following updates regarding our current situation. We are hopeful that as a community we can brave through these troubling times, together.

AAX scheduled a system upgrade that will help protect our users from the multiple malicious attacks that we’ve observed during this vulnerable time. Due to the failure of our third-party partner, some users' balance data were found abnormally recorded in our system. Hence, limiting our services to prevent further risks, the technical team has had to manually proofread and restore the system to ensure maximum accuracy of all users’ holdings.

AAX will continue our best efforts to resume regular operations for all users within 7-10 days to ensure the utmost accuracy. In this light, withdrawals have been suspended to avoid fraud and exploitation. We understand it is important for users to be able to withdraw and transact as soon as possible, and we are working extremely hard to offer limited withdrawals to minimize risk.

Meanwhile, we have created an AAX User Withdrawal Request Form for withdrawal and other operational requests. Our Customer Service Team will follow up and strive to resolve the requests manually one by one in close coordination with our security, operations and compliance team to ensure a smooth process. Expect manual withdrawals to take longer than usual.

AAX has set up a dedicated Task Force to closely monitor the situation and provide daily updates everyday at 12:00pm (UTC+8) on our official social media and telegram communities, including the status for daily withdrawals and the progress of our system updates. And we seek to provide the highest level of transparency on our liquidity and risk management.