EVMOS launch issues
EVMOS has been a long awaited addition to the Cosmos eco-system. The chain launched a few days ago, after a couple of delays, and years of development. However, the launch has not gone well, and the chain is currently at a halt as an upgrade to fix some of the issues has failed and blocks are not happening. The team has paused everything while they work out what to do next.
REKTdrop issues.
The REKTdrop was a very ambitious airdrop set up, with numerous parties set to receive a combined 50% of the genesis supply of tokens. As the chain came to life, everyone was waiting excitedly to claim and stake for high early APR. The first issues arose, and the claim site did not go live. One early issue for the project is that a few (literally from my understanding just a few people) figured out how to claim part of the drop, and got some stake in place just before the Epoch. EVMOS is an Epoch based platform, and inflation rewards for stakers pay out once a day. So these few people claimed an entire days worth of inflation for themselves.
Needless to say, this early benefit for a few people skews the nature of the fair-drop, and starts the chain off on a bad footing. As the first day after launch progressed, methods started to be shared about how to claim the airdrop, using workarounds rather than the official claim site (which still didn't go live). Numerous people (myself included) where able to use these methods to claim up to 75% of the airdrop they were entitled to, however many were not.
Of particular importance is that anyone using a Ledger device was unable to claim any drop. The second epoch happened and those that had claimed and staked earned a significant return, upwards of 20% increase for the day. Those that were unable to claim and stake (particularly ledger users) where left high and dry, and started to watch their allocation become diluted by early inflation. The irony of the situation was not lost, with many observing that a "REKTdrop" which on the Ethereum side was primarily going to those that were on platforms that got exploited, or payed extreme gas amounts. The very users that were cautious and used best practice security to avoid getting Rekt, were being disadvantaged.
Slowly, some methods to claim for Ledger users did emerge, but as none were official many were cautious. The next days epoch happened, the chain still had many problems, and work was underway in the background by the team to fix the technical launch issues.
Failed upgrade.
Network upgrade has unfortunately failed. The chain is halted, and will be stopped for the next 24-48 hours while the team and validators reconvene and decide next steps. No transactions will be processed in the meantime.
We are gathering all the information available, we don't have all the answers at the moment but should have a wholistic idea of what went wrong soon.
This quote is from the announcement channel of the EVMOS discord, and pretty much sums up where we are at at the moment. The chain has stopped, the upgrade failed, and the team are working out what to do next.
Discussions are occurring across various platforms, in discord and of course on twitter to work out what to do next.
An interesting suggestion that has gained a lot of support has come from Sunny Aggarwal in this tweet:
I think EvmosOrg should just restart the chain from genesis. A lot of early stakers were able to >100x their stacks while the claim website for most users was down
I think taking a couple wks to properly test everything through & through, and then start from a clean fair state
My thoughts.
For what it is worth, I agree with Sunny. The airdrop has not gone to plan, that much is clear. There are plenty of people that have been left out, and the fact that the claim site was never available, and people had to follow suggestions by others in a discord chat is not a great start.
One of the complicating factors, in the event of abandoning this chain and starting from scratch is how to compensate (if indeed there is any compensation) for people that have traded OTC. There is an argument that OTC trades on a token with a problematic launch is a high risk play, and that basically it is a case of "too bad, so sad". There is also an argument that these early OTC buyers acted in good faith, in the belief that the chain would progress accordingly and not be abandoned after a few days. I for one don't have any idea how to handle this situation.
Overall, despite being in a position where I have benefited from staking early (although not getting in on the day 1 epoch), I would support a complete restart. Halt everything, compensate OTC buyers somehow, and do the work to fix the issues. Take a breather and then test and relaunch from genesis in a couple of weeks. For such an important project for the cosmos, it would be a shame if lingering disillusionment from a problematic launch cast a shadow over the project. Take a breather, and fix the issues and then start again.
A couple of weeks to make things right, and launch with a working claim system that has full ledger support will ensure the chain isn't tainted from the start.
That is just my 2c worth of feedback.
Whatever happens, I am still looking forward to the chain, and the projects that will launch on top of it. While these issues seem major at the moment, once the chain successfully gets underway, then we can all get on with it. I wish the dev's and the team behind EVMOS all the best in navigating these troubled times, and hope the community remain supportive and positive and all work towards the best possible resolution of these issues.
Thanks for reading,
JK.