What is Shiba Inu? Tokenomics, Fundamentals, Shibarium, Burning, FAQs in 2024

Shiba Inu is a meme coin created by the pseudonymous developer Ryoshi as a response to Dogecoin. Initially launched as an ERC-20 meme coin on Ethereum, it has now developed its own blockchain which supports NFTs, DeFi and DEXes.

It is among the major altcoins and enjoys a very high popularity.

Shiba Inu Price Today in USD

The widget below shows the latest price for Shiba Inu in US Dollars and also shows the percentage of ups and downs in the last 24 hours.

There is also a miniature unlabeled graph on the right-side of the price.

Tokenomics

Token Name	Shiba Inu
Symbol	SHIB
Initial Supply	1000 Trillion
Circulating Supply (Jan 2024)	589 Tillion (incl. 8 Tilllion Staked)

Tokens on Shibarium

1. Shiba Inu
2. Bone Token
3. Leash Token

Shiba Inu is the native token of the Shibarium Blockchain and can be used to pay gas fees for transactions.

Bone Token is the governance token of the entire ecosystem of Shiba Inu. There is a limited supply of 250 million Bone Tokens.

Leash is the reward token of the community and it also has a limited supply of 107,646 coins. The token is rewarded to loyalists. Whoever holds the Leash token also receives Bone Token as rewards and early access to Shiba Inu’s Shiboshi NFTs and Metaverse Land Sales.

Wallets that Support Shiba Inu

Below is a list of top wallets that support Shiba Inu and also given details of the supported blockchains.

#NOTE: A cryptocurrency may exist on multiple blockchains. For example USDT exists on Ethereum, BNB Chain, Algorand, Polygon and several others.

1. MetaMask – Ethereum, Shibarium
2. Trust Wallet – Ethereum, BNB Chain
3. Exodus Wallet – Ethereum

Supported Exchanges

1. Binance
2. Coinbase
3. OKX
4. Gate.io
5. Upbit
6. Kucoin
7. Bybit
8. Uniswap V2
9. Crypto.com
10. Kraken

A Favorite of Whales

Shiba Inu started as a favorite of Ethereum whales due to multiple reasons such as its price, popularity, strong community, launch of new blockchain and high burn rate.

Into The Block shows that as of January 2024, 76% of circulating supply is held by large investors and whales.

Shibarium

Shibarium is the blockchain developed by Shiba Inu’s team because the excessive gas fees in Ethereum were troubling its popularity. Further, with its own blockchain, the meme coin could finally offer some utility of its token. The absence of any utility seemed to make it redundant and the blockchain was losing its relevance.

The Shibarium blockchain was launched on August 16, 2023. However, it soon crashed because it witnessed 480 times more traffic than it could handle (16 Million visitors). This led to a crash in its website (and not the blockchain).

See more

I want to make sure people understand that if https://t.co/K6OGCE01iv is down just the block explorer is down not the network, this is because we use an opensource version of Blockscout and don’t use big servers for it and they are working on getting hosted version up soon.…

— Kaal (@kaaldhairya) August 24, 2023

A few days later, on Aug 21, 2023, the team restored the website with the help of Polygon’s team. Shytoshi Kusama, lead Shibarium developer, thanked Sandeep and his team at Polygon, acknowledging the help even in a cutthroat market.

#Note: During the same period (Aug 2023) companies operating in Web3 were still experiencing difficulties due to lack of funding, uncertainty of Bitcoin ETFs and several other market-related factors.

Need for Shibarium and its Benefits

The need for Shibarium was felt due to the following reasons:

1. High gas fees in Ethereum
2. Low utility of Shiba Inu Token
3. Lack of any value other than just being a meme coin
4. High developmental activity in other projects

Let me explain these topics one by one based on my real life experience with Shibarium.

1. High Gas Fees on Ethereum

When I first started working in Web3, we used to receive payments in USDT (Ethereum). In early 2022, we found that the gas fees had skyrocketed to nearly $35 per transaction. However, by late 2022 I saw it had calmed down to about $5. Yet, this was also a very high price to pay and would kill the returns on my investments.

When I bought $10 worth of Shiba Inu, I was had to spend $5 just on gas fees. Obviously the $5 gas fees didn’t matter when your transaction was above $10,000. But for smaller buyers, it made no sense to pay such as high gas fee.

Since Shiba Inu was issued first on Ethereum as an ERC-20 coin, any buyer transferring those to their own wallet had to pay a steep gas fees.

For, other coins there were other blockchains available. For example, USDT was also issued on Tron (less than $1 fees). However, Shiba Inu was only available on Ethereum.

Also, when I used wrapped versions of Shiba Inu and stored them on BNB Chain, I saw that they had very less liquidity and often would take several minutes for buying or selling. This badly impacted my profitability.

2. Low Utility of Shiba Inu

The only reason Shiba Inu was popular because it had a huge fan following but fans were later disillusioned because all they could do with their Shiba Inu coins was to buy and store them. Unlike Ethereum it had no more utility like NFTs, DeFi or DApps.

The introduction of these featured on Ethereum would not have worked because it would keep many small investors away, which would violate the basic tenets of decentralization.

3. Value Proposition

The token had no other value proposition other than having a dynamic community. Clearly the utility of a community did not give users any real monetary benefit.

It prevented several users like me to buy it. The usual response that I would get is “Do we get more returns on investment if the community size increases?” Sadly, that was a no.

Therefore, launching its own blockchain made much more sense. Now community members could play games, buy NFTs, do DeFi activities and much more.

4. Competition

Several of its competitors started high developmental activity with their projects like Cardano, Polygon and Solana. By not doing anything on this front Shiba Inu risked losing relevancy and the tag of a top altcoin.

Why Create a Layer-2 and not a Layer-1 Blockchain?

A Layer-1 blockchain is a self centric and has no shared resources with any other blockchain. They are designed to be independent. A cryptocurrency developed in a Layer-1 blockchain cannot be transferred to other chains as they do not have the same developmental standards.

Layer-2 blockchains seek to support other layer-1 blockchains by validating their (L1’s) transactions off their blockchain. This is done by providing Zero Knowledge(ZK) Rollups or Optimistic(OP) Rollups. For example, Ethereum’s transactions could be validated on Polygon through ZK Rollups. They are very similar to the Layer-1s and are often based on the core of L1 blockchains.

Shiba Inu’s blockchain, Shibarium, was a Layer-2 blockchain of Ethereum.

The decision to develop a Layer-2 solution was due to several reasons as per my understanding and research.

1. Shiba Inu was issued on Ethereum and could facilitate an easy transfer of coins to Shibarium. Therefore, it had to be designed in a similar way as Ethereum.
2. Users using Ethereum’s DApps and DEXes could be incentivized to use Shibarium with no additional knowledge.
3. Shibarium could get some traffic and transactions from Ethereum as people would have seen a cheaper alternative to store their ERC-20 tokens and NFTs.

Success or Failure

Shibarium’s success depends on several factors such as user experience, integration with exchanges and various protocols, wallet integrations, etc.

Shibarium Wallets

Below is a list of wallets that support the Shibarium blockchain.

NOTE:

• Exchange wallets are those which are integrated with any exchange and is used to buy, sell or store crypto. You cannot connect these wallets to individual websites or protocols.
• Hot wallets are those which are available as a software for desktop, android or iOS device. They are also available as browser extensions.
• Cold wallets are hardware wallets which can be disconnected from the internet (air-gapped) for security.

Exchange Wallets

1. Binance
2. Coinbase
3. Kraken
4. Bybit

Hot Wallets

1. MetaMask
2. Math Wallet
3. Coinbase Wallet

Cold Wallets

1. Ledger

Burning Activity

Shiba Inu burns a portion of those tokens which it receives as Gas Fees. There have been numerous spikes in burns and these massive token burns are also well received within the community.

Why burn Shiba Inu Tokens?

Burning of Shiba Inu decreases in the circulating supply. Since, the demand is same before and after burning, the value of circulating Shiba Inu tokens increases. This is as per the law of demand and supply.

When it was launched Shiba Inu had 1000 Trillion tokens in circulating supply which was reduced by 400 Billion by a generous burning by Vitalik Buterin.

Currently, the circulating supply is around 581 Trillion coins and an additional 8.2 Trillion coins have been locked via staking.

#NOTE: Staking reduces the token supply temporarily. While burning removes them permanently from circulation.

Lately as of Dec 2023 and Jan 2024, there have been numerous spikes in token burns aided by the transfer of Shiba Inu to Shibarium by Whales.

Shiba Inu Burn Addresses

Address Name	Burn Address
Burn Address 1	0xdead000000000000000042069420694206942069
Burn Address 2	0x000000000000000000000000000000000000dead
Black Hole Address / Null Address	0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000

NOTE: A Black Hole Address sends the tokens to the Genesis Block from which the cryptocurrency was created.

Burning Targets

In a tweet, Shytoshi Kusama said in December 2023 that a 99.9% burn rate though challenging was not impossible.

Frequently Asked Questions