Shiba Inu Might Soon Get a Utility Boost and Escape the Memecoin Arena

Shiba Inu grabbed headlines after surging by over 13,000 within weeks to break into the top-10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization in 2021. Six months down the line, the development team wants to give it real-world utility instead of the memecoin tag that it rode to fame.

Shiba Inu’s community is rippling with excitement following reports that Shiberium, a layer-2 blockchain around the network, is nearing completion. Several reports have suggested that the Shibarium testnet will be launched in June with the strongest indicator being the $XFUND Mainnet upgrade expected in May.

Shytoshi Kusama, the lead developer of Shiba Inu has dropped several cryptic hints about the development. His latest clue was a GIF that was captioned “laughter in Shibarium,” which the community member construed as a positive sign. Shiba Inu enthusiasts are quick to recall Unification’s announcement early in the year that Shibarium’s private testnet development had proceeded to the second stage.

The excitement around Shibarium is not far-fetched. A blog post by the team noted that transactions would be “approved in seconds for pennies,” fanning the embers of hope for cheaper transaction fees. Kusama corroborated this on Shiba Discord that “Shibarium will offer low fees for every service, game or whatever that builds on it.”

Other benefits Shibarium could offer the ecosystem acting as a bridge between other blockchains and offering developers the opportunity to build on the platform through the upcoming Shibarium Hackathon. Analysts are already making calls that Shibarium could be the catalyst for a massive price rally for SHIB that will be reminiscent of the highs from 2021.

Shiba Inu has continued to improve on its utility with the foray into the metaverse. A blog post from the team revealed that rewards from land event sales may be available for the holder from July 22. Details in the post indicated that users can get the rewards if they have locked LEASH and placed a bid for “at least once on a land plot, or minted land(s) per wallet”. The team added that the reward distribution was a one-time event.

Trouble brewing on the Shiba Inu horizon?

Amid all the hype around the network, the disappearance of Ryoshi, Shiba Inu’s mysterious founder has been a source of worry for investors., The founder deleted his social media accounts and erased all his digital footprints overnight as tongues began to wag over the future of the project. 

While the community tried rationalizing the founder’s disappearance, a worrying trend reared its head causing further panic. The SHIB burn rate dropped by a staggering 64.2% over the last day as only 54.6 million SHIB tokens were burnt. The impact according to experts is a delay in the bullish impact that it might have on the entire token.

Lead developer Kusama played down the disappearance and claimed that the rest of the team would “actualize Ryoshi’s vision and plan for this grand experiment.”

Meanwhile, the research team at Finder, an independent comparison site, predicts that Shiba Inu could suffer the same fate as Terra after it crashed, leaving investors with losses running into billions. Despite the absence of an algorithmic stablecoin, Finder cites the absence of real-world application as a reason for a potential crash.