Burn Portal R.I.P.?

It seems the Shib community can’t go a day without some major disaster hitting it hard every once in a while. This time around, it’s the official burn portal that is at the center of it.

Initiated by the devs of Ryoshis Vision back in April 2022, the burn portal was meant to become the ultimate burn mechanism that would incentivize the Shib Army to commit their tokens to flame and fire by offering monetary rewards in return for such an act of selflessness.

For a time, it seemed to be working quite well - headlines informing of yet another billion tokens burned via the portal were making the news faster than one could keep track of the burns. Recently though, the burns, it would seem, had a foot on the brakes with the attention paid to the portal itself in the media having been mediocre at best. This turned right around when a short while ago a delay was announced in the payouts to those who took part in the “burn-portalling”. While some users have been able to collect on their rewards, if not without a short delay, others have yet to see any payback for their burns at all.

The reason for that remains largely behind the veil, with the Ryoshis Vision team (not to be confused with the Shib devs) only vaguely addressing some “technical issues” as the culprit, and no clear deadline having yet been given at press time as to when those issues might be fixed.

Meanwhile, over on ShibaSwap blog, an article was published that aimed to deliver a message to the community that repairs are being made even as we speak and that the devs are working with the portal team around the clock in order to bring things back to normal as soon as possible.

To say the feedback from the community was far from positive is to say nothing. Some users chose not to mince their words and straight up called the portal a scam in a series of tweets that followed in the wake of the delay announcement.

Although conspiracy theories about the burn portal’s developers being crooks do seem appealing considering the situation, we believe it was a technical setback that caused it, rather than an elaborate scheme. 

A good argument in favor of that lies in the fact that the burn portal itself has been - technically speaking - a bit under the weather lately, seeing as even its burn counter was dysfunctional as seen at press time. 

In these difficult times, we’d like to remind the Shib community to remain strong and dedicated to building this family of like-minded individuals. Setbacks like this one are natural and should be expected wherever there’s technology involved. The burns, whether official or independent, will persist regardless of circumstances.

Stay strong, Army!