- The highly anticipated Shiba Inu upgrade, Shibarium, has encountered immediate issues, with $1.7 million in ETH trapped on the new bridge
- Shiba Inu token’s value dropped around 9% after the turbulent Shibarium launch, where the network stalled for over five hours
- Despite successful testing, Shibarium’s lead developer admitted that the team had “fucked up hard”
It’s been two years in the making, but the much anticipated Shiba Inu upgrade, dubbed Shibarium, has encountered issues right off the bat, with $1.7 million in ETH stuck on the newly unveiled bridge. The Shiba Inu (SHIB) token experienced a notable decline of around 9% following the turbulent launch, which saw the network come to a grinding halt for over five hours. Shiba Inu’s lead developer admitted that the dev team “fucked up hard”, with those who sent their ETH to the bridge unlikely to get it back.
Cracks in the Shibarium Tank
The Shibarium has been a vision for the Shiba Inu community ever since the coin made headlines for its massive gains in 2021, and its supporters have been giddy with excitement ever since. Shibarium has aspirations of serving as the bedrock for the world’s first decentralized digital nation-state, with its primary function being to support the existing ecosystem of Shiba Inu tokens, encompassing SHIB and LEASH. Validators within the network will receive BONE tokens, a governance token that holds a total supply of 250,000,000, as a reward for their contributions.
Testing for the Shibarium mainnet was successful, leading to high hopes for the full launch, but these hopes have proved to be wide of the mark:
In case yall were wondering how Shibarium is going pic.twitter.com/S5vjTxoMDk
— ʎppɐꓷ ɯooɹɥS (@shroom_daddy) August 16, 2023
The individual posting this succinct summary is Shiba Inu’s lead developer, and things didn’t get much better:
several years of max value extracting and hyping up Shibarium and this is the best they can do pic.twitter.com/qFzzxzSvgx
— ʎppɐꓷ ɯooɹɥS (@shroom_daddy) August 16, 2023
During this time frame, users had initiated transfers totaling 954 ETH, worth approximately $1.7 million, with an additional amount equivalent to $750,000 worth of BONE moved to the network’s contract. A Remote Procedure Call (RPC) intended to integrate the Shibarium network with a widely-used cryptocurrency wallet had failed to operate as intended, causing further complications.
Ambitions Checked
This unexpected setback in the launch of Shibarium has put a dent in what was envisioned by fans to be a dynamic and cost-effective ecosystem. This network was conceived as a cornerstone of a broader strategy to elevate Shiba Inu’s standing from meme coin to main player, which this cock up has done little to help with.
The tumultuous launch cast a shadow over the tokens associated with Shibarium’s ecosystem: within the past 24 hours, BONE has experienced a decline of 13% while LEASH witnessed a substantial drop of 25%, primarily attributed to the souring community sentiment surrounding the launch complications.
