What is Shibarium, the SHIB-Backed Network that Tripled Wallet Numbers Overnight?

Shibarium is an Ethereum layer-2 network backed by Shiba Inu’s SHIB tokens and built atop the Ethereum blockchain. This layer, according to the Shiba Inu Ecosystem blog, “aims, as a protocol, to work on top of existing blockchain networks, allowing for faster, cheaper, and more private transactions to be processed off-chain, while still relying on the security of the underlying blockchain.”

After a rocky start, Shiba Inu declared the long-awaited Shibarium Bridge fully functional on August 28, 2023. “Bridging” is the act of moving funds from a Layer-1 to a Layer-2. The term Layer-1 refers to underlying blockchain protocol, in this case Ethereum. Layer-2, meanwhile, is the third-party protocol built on top, such as Shibarium.

Within two days, the number of daily transactions doubled and the number of wallet addresses went from just over 100,000 to 330,000+.

Shibarium was launched on August 16, but the following day, transactions were sluggish for 11 hours, with some $1.7 million worth of Ethereum stuck in the bridge between the Ethereum and Shibarium networks.

With a focus on metaverse and gaming applications, as well as serving as a cost-effective settlement option for DeFi applications, Shibarium is looking to showcase the potential of the Shiba Inu project beyond its origins as a meme coin, i.e. Dogecoin (DOGE).

Shibarium is designed to enable faster and easier access to its much-touted Shib: The Metaverse, which the company says will launch at the end of 2023.

The platform recently underwent an extensive testing period, which saw a reported 21 million users and, as the developers told Decrypt earlier, “sub-fractional transactions cost compared to Polygon and instant speeds.”

The news of the successful Shibarium Bridge had little effect on the value of SHIB. At the time of writing, the Shiba Inu coin was trading at $0.00000825 itself, up from $0.00000803 48 hours prior, amounting to a paltry +2.74%. $BONE, launched by Shiba Inu in July 2021, is the native token within the Shibarium protocol. It too, was unaffected by the news. During the same 48-hour period, the value of the Bone Shibaswap dropped from $1.29 to $1.27.