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What is Coinbase’s ‘Application Disabled’ error and how to resolve it?

by Vamshi VangapallyJanuary 11th, 2019

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Coinbase provides various APIs ranging from authentication to crypto-prices. As a developer, we could be using any of those services. For us to access these services, we would need to create an application on Coinbase under “<strong>API Access</strong>”. Most likely, if you are reading this article — you would be seeing the applications listed under “API Access” tab would have a red badge saying “<strong>Disabled</strong>”

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featured image - What is Coinbase’s ‘Application Disabled’ error and how to resolve it?

We at BearTax support our customers 24x7. As the monitoring systems alerted us, we had to check why the application was disabled and take necessary actions to enable it quickly. Here’s why it shows up the error and what you would need to do.

Coinbase API

Coinbase provides various APIs ranging from authentication to crypto-prices. As a developer, we could be using any of those services. For us to access these services, we would need to create an application on Coinbase under “API Access”. Most likely, if you are reading this article — you would be seeing the applications listed under “API Access” tab would have a red badge saying “Disabled”

Why is my application disabled by Coinbase?

TL;DR: Coinbase updated it’s developer agreement and requires you to accept it before anyone uses Coinbase’s API via your application.

Everything was working fine and every one of our users was able to either fetch prices or authenticate themselves or could be fetching transactions for tax purposes on software like BearTax — Everyone’s who needs API permissions will be shown with a big blue screen and a message “application disabled”.

This will look like a glitch for your users, but a nightmare for you as you don’t know what would have broken this integration! Why did the Coinbase application get disabled would be the first question that pops into your mind and tries to parse in various directions.

Reason for ‘application disabled’ on Coinbase

Coinbase seems to have updated their developer agreements and needs every developer using the API to agree their “new” terms and conditions before they let their users use the API.

Generally, API providers give a heads up on upcoming events where service delivery could be impacted and prompt if there are any actions to be taken to avoid the downtime or this kind of impact. Here, in this case, the application stops working all of a sudden with a big blue screen and a small error message.

How to solve ‘application disabled’ issue?

Follow the steps below to solve the ‘application disabled’ issue with Coinbase API.

Login to your Coinbase account (the developer who has admin rights on application)
Head to “Settings” tab on your top menu to get a submenu starting with “My Profile”.
Click on “API Access” in the submenu to view applications accessing API.
You should see your applications under the heading “My OAuth2 Applications” with a red badge “DISABLED” beside them and an orange text “Action Required” beside the Edit button.
Click on “Edit” button to edit your application and scroll to the end of the form.
You should check the box beside “I agree to new developer terms and conditions” — Click the “Save” button to have your application enabled.