Trust, Web3 and The Shibarium Drama

TL;DR

• On Wednesday, Shibarium (the team behind the SHIB token) launched their brand new Ethereum Layer-2 (L2) blockchain.

• The problem is that after the launch of Shibarium, when users have tried to transfer their funds from Ethereum to the L2, it hasn’t worked.

• Instead of owning the problem, interrupting transactions and figuring out how to fix it, Shibarium was released yesterday a blog titled “Shibarium: ALL IS GOOD.”

• The Web3 space is all about trust. Lose confidence on day 2 and it may take a long time to recover… if at all.

Full story

Losing confidence on day 2 of a product launch isn’t great.

But that’s exactly what happened for Shibarium.

Here’s what we know so far:

On Wednesday, Shibarium (the team behind the SHIB token) launched their brand new Ethereum Layer-2 (L2) blockchain.

The goal is to offer an L2 on Ethereum that is even cheaper and faster than Polygon (another L2 on Ethereum), while ridding themselves of the reputation they have as simply the creators of a “meme coin.” shake off.

(Sounds great in theory).

The problem is that they’ve gained a new reputation (making “meme coin makers” suddenly shine in comparison).

After the launch of Shibarium, when users tried to transfer their funds from Ethereum to the L2, it didn’t work.

At the time of writing, approximately $2.5 million in funds are tied between the two networks.

That sucks, but the story doesn’t end there.

Instead of owning the problem, interrupting transactions and figuring out how to fix it, Shibarium was released yesterday a blog titled “Shibarium: ALL IS GOOD.”

In it they said the only reason it doesn’t work is because of the “crazy traffic” being driven to Shibarium.

But crypto Twitter sleuths have other ideas…

We are not crypto-Twitter sleuths and we are not part of the ‘ShibArmy’.

What we know for sure is: the Web3 space is all about trust. Lose confidence on day 2 and it can take a long time to recover.

If at all.