Team Behind Shibarium Denies Reports of Bridge Problems and Asset Losses

Massive Influx of Transactions Causes Technical Difficulties

The team behind the newly released Shibarium mainnet has denied reports of bridge problems and asset losses, saying screenshots circulating in the crypto community are false. Shytoshi Kusama, co-founder of the Shiba Inu ecosystem, blamed a massive influx of transactions and user activity for causing technical difficulties on Shibarium, an Ethereum layer-2 scaling blockchain launched hours earlier.

Traffic Overload Strains the Network

Kusama shared data from Alchemy, revealing that the project had allotted 400 million compute units per month. However, in nearly 30 minutes after Shibarium's launch, the network experienced 160 million compute units. "Although we expected a very busy moment, we never expected this much traffic, instantly," Kusama said. Despite having validators already on autoscale, the team has been working tirelessly to scale and handle the influx of users.

Rumors Surface After Alleged Internal Conversation

Concerns about Shibarium began circulating after screenshots reportedly captured an internal Telegram conversation between developers, suggesting the team was unable to recover assets bridged to the network. Blockchain sleuth ZachXBT noted that the RPC (the node running the blockchain software) was compromised, but could not confirm if any assets were lost. At present, the Shibarium RPC website is still down.

Denying Rumors as FUD

Kusama dismissed the rumors as FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) and urged for patience as the team works to scale and bring up the chain again. He emphasized their commitment to resolving the technical difficulties and ensuring the integrity of the decentralized nation state.

The Innovation of Shibarium

Shibarium relies on a new consensus mechanism called proof-of-participation, where validators are selected based on their cryptocurrency holdings. The network is designed to interact with the primary Ethereum layer-1 blockchain, providing more efficient and scalable transactions. The release of Shibarium's mainnet comes after months of testing involving millions of users and the creation of 21 million wallets.