What is Shiba Inu (SHIB)?

Shiba Inu is a dog-themed token named after a breed of hunting dog from Japan. The famous or, some might say, infamous “meme” coin has grown immensely recently, leveraging the power of entertainment, culture, and community.

Trends and memes come and go in the crypto world, but meme culture in crypto has acquired significant staying power over the years. Similar to Dogecoin, Shiba Inu is a token which at the height of its meteoric rise, was worth a whopping $41.2 billion in market cap and has grand ideas for the future of its ecosystem.

In brief

• SHIB is an ERC-20 token, aiming towards becoming a chain of its own.
• They are building an NFT-based card game, Shiba Eternity.
• Shiba Inu is highly liquid and operates as a decentralised exchange.
• Half the supply was given to Vitalik Buterin for safekeeping, who then burned his coins.
• Shiba and Dogecoin are seen as cultural phenomena competing against each other.

Who created SHIBA?

Shiba Inu was created by an anonymous “guy of no consequence tapping at a keyboard” known as Ryoshi. Little is known of the founder, who took after Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin creation. SHIB has nothing to do with Bitcoin, and the two can neither be confused nor compared. 

Three reasons are listed for the creation of the coin in the “Woofpaper”:

1. "We started from zero, with zero"
2. "The brilliant minds behind Shib had never collaborated before"
3. "We love Shiba Inu Dogs"

In his blog, Ryoshi claims that typically there are different roles in a company, like a CEO, a "tech guy," and a roadmap, resulting in "someone plebs can bitch at." But with Shiba, nobody is responsible,  emphasising that he has zero SHIB (presumably to this day). 

How does it work?

While it was first and foremost a meme coin, Shiba Inu has released and is working on many products. The persistent efforts of the SHIB community created a promising ecosystem.

ShibaSwap is the coin’s designated Decentralised Exchange (DEX) which started as a fork of Sushiswap. The Automated market-making DEX offers services running on Ethereum, the functions of which are described as follows:

• NFTs: users can trade 10,000 unique ‘Shiboshis’ NFTs on the decentralised exchange.
• BURY: users can stake several tokens to earn additional BONE tokens. While staking, users receive tokens representing a proportional share in the staking pool. Stakers claim 33% of returns on a weekly, but the rest are locked in for 6 months.
• SWAP: The primary function of the platform is for users to swap ERC-20 tokens for other tokens. Shiba Inu appears to be taking the ‘namecoin’ route, following the trend. Still, it aims to release an ecosystem of DeFi products, including swap services.
• BONEFOLIO: this is a ShibaSwap data analytics interface.

What is the SHIB token?

Shiba Inu (SHIB) is to Ethereum what Dogecoin (DOGE) is to Scrypt – the Litecoin mining algorithm.

The total supply of the SHIB token was over 1,000,000,000,000,000 originally. The founder Ryoshi locked 50% of the supply in Uniswap and sent the other half to Vitalik Buterin for safekeeping.

However, Buterin decided to burn 90% of his share, which would have been worth billions later due to SHIB’s soaring price at the height of the 2021 frenzy. The remaining 10% were sent to a charity, as were about 50 trillion SHIB more that Vitalik had donated to a COVID-19 relief fund. Vitalik said he didn’t want "to be a locus of power, " which was why he gave the tokens away. The token plummeted but later recovered after the community and charity fund agreed.

The SHIB community increased token burning in late 2021. In an organised Christmas burn party, over 239 million SHIB were permanently removed from circulation. In total, the team has burned nearly one billion SHIB since October. Shiba also has a crypto record label selling merchandise, NFTs, and concert tickets. 

SHIB Usage

Shiba Inu has three tokens: SHIB, LEASH, and BONE. 

Each token is set to have a specific function as detailed on the official Shibatoken site. Currently, they can be used as such:

• Staking: Users can stake $SHIB, $LEASH, and $BONE in BURY to earn more $BONE tokens.
• Governance: $BONE holders can vote on proposals in the Doggy DAO. This feature remains in development for now. 

The current circulating supply is 550 trillion SHIB, according to figures from Coingecko.

Shibarium

The Shibarium is designed to be a layer2 to Ethereum, aiming to increase scalability and reduce fees. Little is known about the expected release date of such layer2, but no “Shiba v2” is expected. The $BONE token will be used to pay the gas of this layer2.

Shiba Eternity
Shiba Eternity is a card game revolving around SHIBA, enabling players to select a class and participate in captivating battles. This card game is, for now, off-chain, but the team is aiming to bring a new version of it on-chain. 

Shiboshis

Shiboshis are a collection of 10’000 Shiba-themed NFTs designed as unique collectables for their upcoming game. They can be found on OpenSea at a floor price of 0.815 at the time of writing. 

Putting it all together

The SHIB token is a meme coin and briefly became one of the top 10 crypto projects in the world. Many have attributed this phenomenon to the oversupply of liquidity in all markets after central bankers printed trillions of Euro-Dollars in 2020. Still, the coin’s light-hearted and community-driven approach has attracted millions of users, and noteworthy development has taken place. In the future, the Shiba team aims to build a decentralised ecosystem where users can find entertainment to grow their wealth.