The block explorer BaseScan apparently crashed earlier in the present day on the similar time web3 social community Zora rolled out its airdrop program in chaotic trend.
The ZORA token and airdrop went reside shortly earlier than 2pm with none fanfare. Certainly, the corporate’s final pre-launch communication concerning the undertaking was an X submit from two days in the past that merely stated, “$ZORA will be live on April 23, 2025.”
Zora lastly bought round to creating an official announcement two hours after it launched, and even then, its first tweet was rapidly deleted earlier than the present one was uploaded.
Zora’s first announcement tweet was rapidly deleted seconds after it was uploaded.
X customers observed that BaseScan had crashed throughout the launch, and that blocks on the Base blockchain hadn’t been created for no less than quarter-hour. Blockscout additionally went down.
ZORA’s market cap fell 64% from a $461 million excessive to a low of $167 million over these two hours, leading to upset customers and accusations of insiders promoting their allotted tokens upfront.
We have obtained experiences that a few group blockchain explorers, Blockscout and Basescan, are at the moment experiencing points or delays; ought to be mounted quickly because the respective groups are engaged on it
The Base community itself is unaffected and continues to function usually as…
— wbnns.base.eth (@wbnns) April 23, 2025
One consumer famous that Jesse Pollack, the founding father of Coinbase’s Base chain, obtained 2.1 million ZORA tokens as a part of the airdrop. Pollack has been selling ZORA and has needed to repeatedly apologize and make clear his actions whereas advertising and marketing the token.
Zora has allotted 45% of the airdrop for its staff and strategic contributors and 25% for its project-controlled treasury and liquidity swimming pools. The token can even give holders no voting rights, as Zora is basically claiming the token and airdrop are only for enjoyable.
BaseScan is working once more on the time of writing.
