The much-anticipated launch of Shibarium mainnet, a groundbreaking Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution, has been accompanied by unexpected turbulence, leading to significant price declines in the Shiba Inu ecosystem.
On August 16, Shibarium successfully launched on the mainnet after an extensive testing phase involving millions of users and the creation of 21 million wallets.
Shibarium was developed to address Ethereum’s scalability concerns, including enhancing transaction capacity and reducing expenses. Its introduction on Wednesday hence marked a deliberate move to elevate Shiba Inu beyond its origins as a meme coin.
Shiba Inu gained significant popularity during the 2020-2021 bull market. However, despite briefly surpassing the well-known Dogecoin, SHIB’s value plummeted just over 90% during the subsequent bear market.
However, the Shiba Inu community remained resilient and established a decentralized ecosystem centred around SHIB. This ecosystem includes ShibaSwap, a decentralized exchange, and a native token, BONE. In the lead-up to the Shibarium mainnet launch, SHIB’s price experienced an uptick, reflecting optimism within the community.
The network garnered attention from new projects, underscoring its potential influence on the industry. Reports indicated that more than 100 companies were actively developing Shibarium, highlighting the expanding interest in the platform.
However, SHIB and BONE tokens encountered significant price declines following the launch. The plunge came as concerns emerged over a potential hiccup in the launch, with reports suggesting difficulties in recovering assets bridged to the Shibarium network.
Reportedly, some users who sought to transfer their assets from Ethereum to the newly operational network encountered issues that prompted a temporary halt. Notably, Chinese blockchain journalist Colin Wu highlighted that an astounding 965 ETH, valued at $1.7 million, found themselves trapped on the bridge. Supporting evidence from Etherscan substantiated these claims with the Shibarium bridge contract showing a balance of holds 965.3 ETH, equivalent to $1.735 million, in tokens meant to transition from Ethereum to Shibarium.
Meanwhile, issues extended to the Shibarium Remote Control Protocol, which is presently nonfunctional. This setback impeded remote procedures on the network, hampering user interaction and data retrieval efforts.
Furthermore, data from the Shibarium explorer suggests that block production encountered difficulties, causing a 7-hour cessation in blocks. And although block production briefly recommenced, it stalled again before resuming a few hours later.
Meanwhile, the value of SHIB has declined, reaching $0.0000085 during the current reporting period, following a 10% decrease over the past 24 hours. Similarly, BONE plunged significantly over 15%, trading at $1.22 at press time.
