The greatest whales on the Ethereum ($ETH) network have amassed around $85 million in Shiba Inu ($SHIB), a meme-inspired cryptocurrency, ahead of the planned introduction of Shibarium, the cryptocurrency’s layer-2 scaling solution.
According to statistics supplied by whale monitoring website WhaleStats, the meme-inspired cryptocurrency is the third-largest holding of Ethereum whales, trailing Bitpanda’s ecosystem token ($BEST) and Locus Chain ($LOCUS).
It’s worth noting that stablecoins like SDT, USDC, and BUSD are not included, as is the network’s native currency ether ($ETH), which can be staked and used to pay transaction fees on Ethereum.
The accumulation comes ahead of the projected debut of Shibarium, a future layer-2 solution that intends to improve the Shiba Inu ecosystem by, among other things, delivering speedier transactions at a reduced cost. However, there are many unanswered uncertainties regarding Shibarium’s release and utility.
Shibarium will conduct transactions on the Shibarium ecosystem alongside Ethereum. The Shibarium chain will process a significant portion of the transaction load that the Shiba Inu ecosystem now brings to Ethereum.
Furthermore, the layer-2 will remove tokens from circulation in order to lower supply and raise the price. This is referred to as a token burning mechanism, in which tokens are delivered to wallets that can only receive but not send tokens, also known as Dead Wallets. Shibarium transactions will consume $SHIB and demand $BONE.
Shibarium developer Shytoshi Kusama recently stated that the game will be released “very soon.”
Shibarium was first presented by Shiba Inu’s inventor, the unknown developer Ryoshi. However, in the now-deleted blog post, Ryoshi was unsure whether it was its own blockchain or an L2 —but the line between the two is thin: “The line between an L2 and own blockchain is thin, I mean what is the difference really between Matic L2 [Polygon] and BSC [BSC has since been rebranded to BNB Chain]”
According to a developer blog post, Shibarium will continue to be its own layer-2. Because it will remain tied to Ethereum, there will be no SHIB 2.0.
