The EOS blockchain is congested by the EIDOS token airdrop, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase reports on Nov. 9.

In a post on its blog, Coinbase claims that it had trouble in processing its clients’ transactions due to EOS network congestion caused by the EIDOS token airdrop. The exchange has since solved the issue by increasing the amount of staked CPU, securing a sufficient portion of the CPU time remaining on the network to process its transactions.

Interestingly, the incident also caused the price of CPU time on the network to increase by over 100,000% over the course of 4 hours. The CPU time price reached nearly 7.69 EOS/millisecond.

The cause of the EOS congestion

According to Coinbase, a token called EIDOS was released on EOS on Oct. 31 and its airdrop involves sending transactions on the network from the token’s smart contract. 

Exchanges have listed EIDOS/USDT pairs on Nov. 1 to allow people that received the tokens to sell them for the stablecoin.

In order to sell the tokens, users have leased the network’s CPU time to increase the number of transfers processed by the blockchain. This, in turn, caused the EOS network to enter congestion mode and limit the number of transactions users can broadcast to their pro-rata share of total staked CPU resources on the blockchain.

The activity related to the token is responsible for a remarkable portion of total activity on the network:

“Currently, we’re observing around 95% of all EOS transfer actions are related to the EIDOS contract.”

EOS network behaving as expected

Average users, who hold a relatively low amount of staked CPU resources, are currently unable to send transactions. That being said, the exchange also notes that this situation is only temporary. Coinbase expects the network to return to its normal state as soon as it is no longer profitable to collect the tokens or the CPU leases expire after 30 days and the lenders do not renew the lease. Coinbase also points out:

“It is important to note that the EOS protocol is behaving as expected, but congestion mode prevents users from having transactions processed that exceed their CPU stake.”

As Cointelegraph reported at the end of October, EOS holds the top spot in China’s state-backed crypto rankings, while Bitcoin (BTC) is ranked 11th.