$1.7 million rendered inaccessible for weeks in broken bridge to new Shibarium network

People were very excited when the Shiba Inu-focused "Shibarium" layer-2 Ethereum blockchain went live on August 16. The dog-themed network is part of a push to make Shiba Inu a "serious blockchain project" — though the network will use $BONE, $TREAT, $SHIB, and $LEASH tokens, and is still fundamentally based around a dog meme.

A bridge between Ethereum and the Shibarium network was released as the network went live, and eager users quickly transferred a combined 954 ETH (~$1.7 million) to the bridge contract so they could access it on the new chain. However, users started reporting that transactions were stalled, and they weren't able to access their tokens on the Shibarium side.

The team quickly shut down conversation on Discord as more issues were raised, and claimed in a blog post that the issues were caused by nothing more than the network being overwhelmed with traffic. The team denied the authenticity of screenshots of a Telegram chat appearing to show the lead developer writing that the funds were unrecoverable, insisting they were safe.

Finally, weeks after the botched launch, Shibarium re-enabled the bridge and told users they could once again access their funds. Though there have been some delays in transactions, the "stuck" funds appear to be retrievable.