On Aug 16, the Memecoin Shiba Inu project released the Shibarium mainnet, an Ethereum layer-2 network. Developers state that Shibarium’s launch is crucial for the entire SHIB state. Surprisingly, the SHIB token price has dropped around 10%. So what happened?
Shibarium Bridge FUD
The launch of the Shibarium network met a wave of uncertainty soon followed. All transactions on the network were frozen, and nearly 1,000 ETH and $640,000 worth of BONE were trapped.
Rumors and speculation swirled, including some that were later debunked, such as screenshots that were allegedly from Shiba Inu developer Shytoshi Kusama. The situation cast a shadow over the launch of Shibarium, and many in the community were left wondering what would happen next.
Shibarium: All is Well
In a blog post on August 17, Shytoshi Kusama explained that there is no bridge issue, the technical difficulties experienced by Shibarium at the launch were due to a massive influx of transactions and users.
He noted that the project had allotted 400 million compute units per month, but in just 30 minutes, Shibarium had already used 160+ million compute units. This level of traffic is unprecedented for a layer-2 scaling solution, and it caused the network to experience some congestion.
What’s Next?
The Shibarium team was aware of the issue and immediately took steps to address it. They called on the support of some powerful partners. The team also worked closely with the Unification team, who have spent countless hours working to scale the blockchain. They have identified multiple possible solutions and will keep the community updated as they work to bring the blockchain back up.
The Shibarium team stands by their statement that the funds “paused” in the bridge are safe. As a result, they have chosen to “insure” the entire amount of $2 million in case there are any issues after Shibarium is restarted.
