Cardano’s first decentralized app (DApp) SundaeSwap has launched but is causing frustration among users due to congestion, platform bugs and failed transactions.
Is it just expected teething troubles among an influx of enthusiastic users or is there more to it?
SundaeSwap is a decentralized exchange (DEX) and token staking platform. Today’s mainnet launch marks a milestone in the Cardano (ADA) ecosystem as it is the first DApp to leverage their smart contracts.
ADA price surged 50% in the past week before SundaeSwap launch, meaning a successful launch for Cardano is a high-stakes game.
Trading on the DEX began on January 20 at 21:45 UTC. It took less than two minutes for users on the project’s Discord server to start complaining about failed transactions and network congestion.
Trading is now LIVE!
Go to https://t.co/GSGzSuqIcf and trade tokens, deposit liquidity and enjoy! $SUNDAE Token Policy ID: 9a9693a9a37912a5097918f97918d15240c92ab729a0b7c4aa144d77#Cardano #SundaeSwap pic.twitter.com/jhLK6F8PuJ
— SundaeSwap Labs (@SundaeSwap) January 20, 2022
At 22:07 UTC, SundaeSwap CEO Mateen Motavaf posted a message in bold and capital letters attempting to address the volume of complaints on the server:
“IF YOUR ORDER IS ON-CHAIN, IT WILL BE PROCESSED.
The SundaeSwap team hosted a Twitter Spaces AMA around 1:00 am UTC to address other issues traders were having with the platform. With the massive backlog holding up swaps, or “scoops” as they’re called on SundaeSwap, one user asked what the expected impact of an upcoming Cardano node upgrade would be. Chief Technical Officer Matt Ho replied:
“Once the change takes place on the 25th, we expect more than a two-fold increase in throughput from the memory increase itself as additional protocol parameters become available.”
Another user noticed that an order was being filled on the DEX before it was launched on the website. A tech-savvy trader can bypass the website UI and execute trades directly on the underlying smart contracts for each DEX.
Ho replied, “There were so many things to do that perhaps, due to our naivety, we couldn’t believe that someone would have handcrafted a transaction in advance.”
At 2:40 UTC, users were still complaining about failed transactions and orders that had been pending for over four hours. CIO Pi Lanningham replied on Discord, “Orders are still being processed (currently around 2500 orders per hour; currently ~11,000 orders in chain, ~1600 of which are within slippage tolerance).”
The SundaeSwap team has not yet responded to Cointelegraph’s request for further comment.
The project’s core team expected a large backlog ahead of launch, based on testnet performance about a month ago. In a Jan. 8 blog post, the team wrote:
“We would like to inform you that while orders may take days to process, everyone’s orders are processed fairly and in the order in which they were received.”
Related: Cardano goes full send with 50% ADA rally ahead of SundaeSwap launch.
By leveraging the performance of the SundaeSwap platform from an earlier testing phase, the team initially acknowledged the possibility of poor performance but said, “We are very confident that the protocol will be able to handle normal day-to-day loading once things settle down.” “
The Cardano blockchain introduced smart contracts to the platform following the Alonzo hard fork last September. In a week, over 2,000 smart contracts were time-locked onto the blockchain without becoming operational.
