Degenchain Blames Conduit for Migration Struggles

Degenchain, a Layer 3 network built by the DEGEN memecoin community that originated on Farcaster, is taking shots at Conduit, the blockchain deployment protocol.

The team at Degen put out a blog post on Nov. 7 titled “A frustrated migration and a plea to the DEGEN community.” They point the finger at Conduit for “pushing a bad upgrade to the chain” without notification, leading to a 50-hour outage in May, citing the outage as the reason for the chain’s bridging volume dropping by 75% over the next month.

The post claims that Conduit is holding the Degenchain keys hostage, withholding fees, refusing to upgrade the chain, and refusing to acknowledge any wrongdoing in the attempted migration process.

Upon the launch of Degenchain, the DEGEN token flew from a $50 million valuation to a $700 million market capitalization within a month, but has since fallen by roughly 80% to a $136 million market capitalization.

At its peak, the Degenchain bridge processed as much as $50 million per day in bridge deposits but now averages between $2 and $4 million per week, according to TokenTerminal.

Conduit was quick to respond to the claims, saying, “We empathize with the DEGEN team and have been supporting their offboarding, including an engineering-wide sync on Tuesday of this week.”

The statement continued, “We agree with their approach to offboard with support since migrating a chain carries risks due to the technical complexity and engineering resources required. This contract has been signed by Conduit and has been viewed but not signed by DEGEN since October 30th.”

Degenchain and Conduit did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Defiant.

Amid the drama, a memecoin under the ticker DEGEN also was created on Pump.Fun, reaching as high as a $2.5 million market capitalization and labeled by some as “the community-launched” DEGEN. However, it seems memecoin’s moment in the sun was fleeting, and it has since retraced to a sub-$1 million valuation.