What Is Shibarium, and What Does It Mean for Shiba Inu (SHIB): Guide
The community of Shiba Inu (SHIB), the second largest meme coin, has officially launched "intake portal" Join Shibarium, an endpoint to its upcoming L2 Shibarium. Shibarium portal will act as a gateway for all enthusiasts and entrepreneurs interested in working with Shiba Inu (SHIB) on its native blockchain network.
Shibarium portal by Shiba Inu (SHIB) kicks off: Highlights
On Feb. 26, 2023, Shytoshi Kusama, the pseudonymous lead developer of Shiba Inu (SHIB) introduced the Join Shibarium portal, the "intake form" for the upcoming L2.
- Shibarium is the first-ever second-layer scalability solution on Ethereum (ETH) developed by the team of the meme coin;
- Shibarium is designed to accumulate and onboard projects interested in building for the Shiba Inu (SHIB) audience with low gas and high throughput;
- Since Feb. 26, Web3 developers, entrepreneurs, investors, potential validators and content creators can apply to Join Shibarium portal to start testing Shibarium and studying its documentation;
- Shibarium beta version might go live in the coming weeks, while mainnet release is expected in early Q2, 2023.
As such, Shibarium is an unprecedented initiative: a project that started with a semi-ironic "meme coin" ethos can evolve into a full-stack scaling ecosystem for Web3 and start addressing the most dangerous bottlenecks of cryptocurrency's progress.
What are meme coins, and why are they popular?
Meme coins, or "dog coins" at this point, represent a particular class of altcoins initially developed and promoted with no real utility. Dogecoin (DOGE), a Litecoin (LTC) fork from 2013, was the first meme coin; it was inspired by memes featuring "Doge," a funny Japanese Shiba Inu dog. From its very inception, it was described as a joke: its team envisioned no use cases.
Vladislav SopovThe coin had almost been forgotten, but in August 2020, TikTok bloggers decided to pump the price of DOGE. Six months later, the token attracted the interest of Tesla "techno king" Elon Musk. Through his provocative tweets, he triggered the "meme coin" narrative: Dogecoin (DOGE) spiked by 1,000% in 24 hours.
As a response to Dogecoin's (DOGE) popularity, crypto developers started creating dog-themed meme coins as Dogecoin (DOGE) copycats. Shiba Inu (SHIB), Floki Inu (FLOKI), Baby Dogecoin (BABYDOGE) and Dogelon Mars (ELON) are the most popular meme coins of the second generation.
What is Shiba Inu (SHIB)?
Launched in August 2020 amid DeFi Summer and the first-ever TikTok pump, Shiba Inu (SHIB) is the second largest meme cryptocurrency by market capitalization. It prioritizes the ethos of decentralization, "building for fun" and community-driven design.
Shiba Inu's (SHIB) tokenomics is underpinned by SHIB, an ERC-20 cryptocurrency issued on Ethereum (ETH) blockchain. Shiba Inu (SHIB) has the largest total supply of all of the top altcoins: 1 quadrillion SHIB were issued, which is equal to 1 followed by 15 zeros.
Despite having meme coin status, Shiba Inu (SHIB) developers and its community maintain a "serious" ecosystem with a native DeFi protocol ShibaSwap and NFT and metaverse projects. Liquidity providers in the Shiba Inu (SHIB) ecosystem can get rewards for staking its three native coins, SHIB, BONE and LEASH (for xSHIB, xBONE and xLEASH returns). Also, the team released a governance module and inches ever closer to the beta testnet of Shibarium, a Layer 2 network designed to optimize operations in the Shiba Inu (SHIB) ecosystem.
What is Shibarium, an upcoming L2 network?
Shibarium by Shiba Inu (SHIB) developers is set to inherit the best practices of the most popular L2 networks on Ethereum (ETH).
Shibarium: Blockchain
Like all major L2s, Shibarium is designed to process a portion of computations off-chain in order to reduce transactional pressure on Ethereum's (ETH) mainnet. Bone ShibaSwap (BONE) will be a gas currency of the upcoming blockchain. Twenty million BONE will be reserved to reward validators and delegators in the Shibarium ecosystem.
Not unlike Polygon (MATIC), Shibarium will work with Heimdall Validator and Bor block producer nodes. Heimdall will be built on the top of Tendermint consensus engine, while Bor will be 100% compatible with Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).
To become validators, Shibarium users will need to lock at least 10,000 BONE tokens. Enthusiasts interested in supporting the network without running nodes themselves will be able to delegate their tokens.
Shibarium: Ecosystem
The newly launched Join Shibarium portal invites six types of contributors to collaborate with it. It welcomes "Web3/Web4" developers to create applications on Shibarium. Crypto entrepreneurs can move their projects to the upcoming blockchain. The validator/delegator enrollment process is also underway.
Also, all merchants interested in starting to accept Shiba Inu (SHIB) — which will be easier with an active L2 solution — can apply through the Join Shibarium portal. Last but not least, content creators and ecosystem managers can submit their applications and join the development and marketing progress of Shibarium.
In his introduction blog post, Shytoshi Kusama hinted at the integration of Shibarium into Shiba Inu (SHIB) metaverse developments and Shiba Eternity game.
Shibarium: What does it mean for SHIB, BONE and TREAT?
For sure, the release of Shibarium will be a watershed milestone for all tokens of the Shiba Inu (SHIB) ecosystem. For SHIB, it will mean yet another huge catalyst of massive adoption. As Shibarium employs Bone Shibaswap (BONE) as a gas fee token, the launch of the L2 platform will be a major accomplishment for its tokenomics.
Besides SHIB and BONE, Shibarium will leverage an additional financial motivation instrument, TREAT. This token has not been released yet.
Also, Shiba Inu (SHIB) devs highlighted that all assets necessary for Shibarium beta testing will be available for free: every offer to buy testing tokens should be treated as a blatant scam.
Closing thoughts
Shibarium is a much-anticipated second-layer solution on the top of Ethereum (ETH). It is the first-ever scaling network associated with meme coins.
Shibarium will give the Shiba Inu (SHIB) ecosystem a boost by onboarding new dApps and products. Also, it will radically change the tokenomic design of SHIB and associated tokens.
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Dan Burgin
U.Today Editorial Team