SHIB Devs Reopen Ethereum Bridge to Layer-2 Network Shibarium

Shibarium, a layer-2 blockchain developed by the Shiba Inu (SHIB) team, has reopened fund withdrawals on its bridge to Ethereum, which allows users to move their assets between the two networks.

In a Monday update, the pseudonymous Shiba Inu developer Shytoshi Kusama said users can now withdraw a range of assets, including SHIB, LEASH, and wrapped Ether (WEth) tokens.

The withdrawal process is anticipated to be concluded within a reasonable timeframe of 45 minutes to 4 hours.

Withdrawals of the network’s native BONE are also available but may take up to seven days to process, as specified by the network’s design

Shibarium is a layer-2 network developed by the Shiba Inu community on top of the Ethereum blockchain. It aims to serve as a scaling solution for Shiba Inu, expanding it from a meme coin into a comprehensive ecosystem with decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, metaverse apps, and blockchain games.

This reopening comes after the initial launch of Shibarium on August 16, which resulted in approximately $1.7 million worth of Ethereum reportedly being stuck on the Ethereum bridge.

Reacting to the incident, the Shibarium team clarified that the problem was not a result of a malfunctioning bridge. Instead, they attributed the issue to an overwhelming surge in user activity, generating an exceptionally high volume of traffic.

The developers explained that this surge in transactions placed an excessive load on the network’s servers, causing them to surpass their intended operational limits.

Additionally, the developers turned to the Polygon team for assistance, forking the Polygon protocol to resolve the matter.

“Quickly after the incident began, I called Sandeep from Polygon directly, and without a second thought, he helped provide additional resources to ensure a perfect outcome to the situation. And that is why our pivot to fork Polygon was the correct one,” wrote Kusama in today’s blog post.

Decrypt has reached out to Shibarium and Polygon developers for additional comments and will update this article should we hear back.