The highly awaited Shibarium finally made its debut this week. The spotlight was firmly fixed at layer-2 primarily because it aimed to elevate the meme coin’s status in the industry into a more substantial contender. The launch, however, did not meet the expectation as SHIB, BONE, LEASH, and TREAT are experiencing declines in the aftermath.
Transactions stuck on the Shibarium in a pending state is to blame. The community has also pointed to issues plaguing the remote procedure call system, also known as the RPC.
Shibarium’s ‘Sloppy’ Start
According to the blockchain security platform Beosin, there are currently $1.7 million in funds locked in Shibarium. It advised users to temporarily stop using the blockchain. The figure was further confirmed by another blockchain security expert, PeckShied, which revealed that 956 ETH was stuck on the Shibarium bridge.
In case yall were wondering how Shibarium is going pic.twitter.com/S5vjTxoMDk
— ?pp?? ?oo??S (@shroom_daddy) August 16, 2023
Shibarium is a layer-2 solution for the Shiba Inu blockchain that was designed to reduce gas fees and ramp up transactions.
However, a screenshot allegedly depicting an internal conversation on Telegram between Shiba Inu’s lead developer, who goes by the pseudonym Shytoshi Kusama, and other members of the team indicates the failure to retrieve assets bridged to the Shibarium network.
An additional screenshot has been going around that purportedly displayed a Shibarium user encountering a technical issue with the block scanner. They mentioned being unable to retrieve their bridged balance through the RPC query. Meanwhile, the Shibarium RPC website remains inaccessible as well.
Prominent crypto sleuth ZachXBT described the launch as a “sloppy” one. Shibarium’s blockchain explorer, which has faced criticism for being subpar, indicates that the most recent block was added three hours ago.
Shib Inu Tokens Suffer Losses
The botched launch has had a negative impact on the price of all the tokens associated with the ecosystem.
The SHIB meme coin, for one, lost almost 10% in the last 24 hours. However, it is the Shibarium’s governance tokens – BONE and LEASH – that suffered the most, recording approximately 15% and 24% drawdowns during the same period. Meanwhile, TREAT was also down by more than 22%.
