Shibarium Launch Saga: Block Production Resumes Despite Stuck ETH

The Shibarium didn’t get off to a flying start following its launch on August 16. However, the network aims to move past these incidents as block production resumes.

Data from Shibariumscan.io shows that the layer-2 network is up and running again. Shibarium had on August 17 paused block production following the traffic surge, which overwhelmed the blockchain upon mainnet launch. 

Close to $1.7 million in bridged funds had reportedly gotten stuck on the Shibarium bridge, with lead developer Shytoshi Kusama confirming that the funds were irrecoverable. However, in a blog post titled “Shibarium: ALL IS WELL,” Kusama termed this FUD and stated that contrary to earlier reports, there was no bridge issue and all funds were “safu.”

He stated that Shibarium experienced a “massive influx of transactions and users that happened at the same time” upon the network going live. That led to the network going offline and not due to its functionalities as earlier thought.

To highlight the magnitude of the traffic surge that the network experienced, Kusama referenced data from the Web3 development platform Alchemy. Shibraium was allotted 400 Million compute units monthly, but the network experienced 160+ million compute units in just under 30 minutes. At that rate, the network could experience billions of compute units daily, putting it on par with the most active layer-2 blockchains. 

Lead developer Kusama admitted that the team did not expect that level of trading activity on the network. However, he noted that they were “working tirelessly” to scale the chain and increase its computing power to handle and process more transactions. He further emphasized the team’s commitment to position Shibarium as one of the major players in the DeFi world.

Shiba Inu developer Kaal Dhairya provided further updates in a subsequent blog post dated August 18. Following an investigation, the team discovered that one particular block had been loaded with several transactions, which caused it to go into “fail safe mode” to protect the funds.

He mentioned that the team had “identified multiple possible plans of action” to scale the network and ensure it could handle any substantial traffic on the chain.

Dhairya also confirmed that the bridged funds were safe and that in a show of good faith, the team has chosen to obtain a $2 million insurance cover to protect against any potential challenges that could arise from retrieving the funds upon restart of the network. 

SHIB’s price has recovered considerably since the launch saga. However, the token is still down about 1.78% in the last 24 hours, according to data from CoinMarketCap.