What is Shiba Inu?
What do you get when you mix an adorable Japanese dog breed with the world of crypto? You get Shiba Inu, the fluffy memecoin that's taking the internet by storm. Dubbed as the "Dogecoin-killer," Shiba Inu has quickly gained a massive following due to its impressive price performance and community-driven approach. But what exactly is Shiba Inu (SHIB), and why has it captured the attention of crypto enthusiasts around the world? Let's find out.
Shiba Inu was launched in 2020 by a mysterious developer/group called Ryoshi. It wasn't until 2021 when SHIB really got the attention of the mass public. Shiba Inu benefited tremendously from the dog-coin hype, trailing Dogecoin in the competition. It made no sense, yet people had fun buying trillions of the memecoin for as little as a couple dollars.
Unlike other dog coins that rug pulled, Shiba Inu turned out to have an actual plan for growing the project. Ryoshi had outlined the roadmap for Shiba Inu in a series of blog posts. The ball was in the community's court, and SHIB holders decided to stick around.
A series of decisions left an imprint on the SHIB community. Some of them created more trust around the project while other announcements created FUD.
Shiba Inu's whitepaper (called woofpaper) mentioned that Ryoshi sent 50% of the SHIB token supply to Vitalik Buterin. The founder said "We sent over 50% of the TOTAL supply to Vitalik. There is no greatness without a vulnerable point and as long as VB doesn't rug us, then SHIBA will grow and survive."
In 2021, just as the price of SHIB had skyrocketed 700%, Vitalik decided to burn 90% of the tokens in his wallet. He then chose to give the remaining 10% for charity—including 50 trillion SHIB, around $1.2 billion at the time, to the India Covid Crypto Relief Fund.
https://etherscan.io/tx/0xb65bcbb85c1633b0ab4e4886c3cd8eeaeb63edbb39cacdb9223fdcf4454fd2c7
Vitalik had singlehandedly tanked the price of SHIB, but it wasn't the end for Shiba Inu. People were actually happy that the money went to charity and the support around Shiba Inu grew.
In 2022, Ryoshi announced his departure in a farewell note on Medium: “I am not important, and one day, I will be gone without notice. Take the SHIBA and journey upwards frens.”
https://twitter.com/RyoshiResearch
Ryoshi's announcement shook the SHIB community. Many thought this was the end for the project. However, Shiba Inu had grown bigger than its founder. The project is currently maintained by multiple core developers who are committed to move forward with the roadmap. As of 2023, Shiba Inu continues with a clear development direction. It is safe to say that SHIB has transcended the "meme phase."
Shiba Inu also has a governance token called BONE. BONE was designed to allow the ShibArmy to have its voice heard by voting on proposals via the Doggy DAO. According to the DAO rules, the BONE holders get to vote on proposals that are implemented by the Shiba core developers.
Doggy DAO is still in beta, which means the proposals are limited to voting for Woofable Pairs to be added to ShibaSwap. Woofable Pairs are specific liquidity pairs that have been onboarded by the ShibaToken team and are eligible to receive additional ecosystem rewards on top of any exchange fees earned. Eventually, Doggy DAO will have an increased role in determining the overall direction that individual projects take.
If it wasn't clear up to this point, Shiba Inu is a sovereign blockchain on Ethereum. It is actually a fork of the Ethereum protocol, which makes it safe from potential exploits. As of 2023, Shiba Inu has never been hacked.
How does Shiba Inu work?
Shiba Inu started out as a meme coin and evolved into an ecosystem that encompasses DeFi features and even an L2. At its core, Shiba Inu is a decentralized currency that allows users to send and receive digital payments without the need for intermediaries such as banks or other financial institutions.
ShibaSwap
ShibaSwap represents the first product launched on top of Shiba Inu protocol. It provides a safe place for the community to trade tokens on a decentralized exchange, while implementing special incentives for liquidity providers.
ShibaSwap offers the following features: swap, Bury, Dig, Woof, analytics, and burn portal.
The Bury function on ShibaSwap allows users to "stake" their Shiba Inu ecosystem tokens to generate passive income rewards paid in BONE. The rewards earned are proportional to the amount of SHIB, LEASH, or BONE the user has staked.
On ShibaSwap, the action of providing liquidity has been named "Dig." It works just like any other DEX: users provide liquidity and receive a portion of the fees for the respective trading pool. After depositing their crypto assets, users receive SSLP tokens representing their share of the liquidity pool.
"Woof" stands for farming tokens. With the SSLP tokens, users have the option to stake them and earn additional rewards.
In a bid to help users out, ShibaSwap has created its own analytics portal, called the Bonefolio. By accessing Bonefolio, users can see info information on all three Bury pools as well as every liquidity pair hosted on ShibaSwap.
One feature that makes ShibaSwap stand out from other DeFi protocols is the burn portal. Its purpose is clear and simple: users can willingly burn their own tokens and help SHIB become deflationary. As of 2023, the burn portal is being reworked.
Shibarium
Shibarium is the much-anticipated layer-2 for Shiba Inu. The reason behind building a proprietary L2 is to offer faster transactions and much cheaper fees than on Ethereum. Shibarium represents the biggest scalability milestone for Shiba Inu.
Beyond the cost and speed benefits, the development framework for Shibarium provides robust functionality to allow the community to build their vision into the blockchain. For example, the community can develop their own games, NFTs and dapps on top of the Shiba Inu protocol.
Under the hood, Shibarium will be maintained by its own validators. Their job is to verify transactions on the network and maintain the integrity of the ledger. Anyone can participate as a validator on Shibarium and earn from the transaction fees. A minimum stake will be required in order to run a solo validator on Shibarium. This stake ensures validators don't engage in malicious activity. If they do, their stake will be slashed.
Individuals who don't want to run a full node have the option to delegate their BONE tokens to a validator. Delegators choose to lend their tokens to Validator nodes, and as a result, they are entitled to a portion of the rewards earned by those Validators.
Delegators bear the same risk with the validators. For example, if the validator acts maliciously, delegators may lose a part of their tokens in relation to the amount they had delegated to that validator.
The number of validators will be limited to 100 slots, with a minimum requirement of 10,000 BONE. Furthermore, validator selection will be a manual process during the early stages. At some point, the limit of validators will be lifted and anyone will be able to join as a validator.
BONE Token
BONE token represents the governance token of the protocol. With the launch of Shibarium, BONE will also serve as the gas token for the L2. Specifically, users will reward Validators and Delegators within the Shibarium protocol.
LEASH Token
LEASH represents a special token for loyal supporters of the ecosystem, enabling holders to benefit from exclusive perks and access. Past examples have included incentivized BONE rewards for liquidity providers on ShibaSwap, exclusive access to Shiboshi NFT minting, as well as early access to Shib: The Metaverse land sales.
Shiba Inu Game
Shiba Inu Games is an affiliated company started by project lead Shytoshi Kusama in order to facilitate the development of games related to the Shiba Inu Ecosystem. In 2022, the ShibArmy expressed their interest in pursuing the gaming path for the ecosystem.
The gaming branch of Shiba Inu collaborates with PlaySide Studios to commence work on their debut game, Shiba Eternity.
Shiba Eternity is a competitive card game (CCG) with in-app purchases. As of 2023, the game is still in the prototype mode, with several versions being made available to beta testers.
SHIB: The Metaverse
In line with the metaverse hype, Shiba Inu has decided to pursue a project in this direction. Similarly to projects like Decentraland, players in the SHIB metaverse will be able to own plot of lands and interact with other players. The metaverse is being built using the Unreal 5 engine.
As of 2023, the SHIB metaverse is still in the workings. With the land plots sold out, buyers are expected to get their first taste of the metaverse at the end of 2023.
How to make money on Shiba Inu?
Shiba Inu has grown into a multisided ecosystem that spans from DeFi to metaverse and NFTs. Although most of its components are still under construction, users have several ways to make money on Shiba Inu.
ShibaSwap Dig
The ways to make money on ShibaSwap are just like using any other DeFi protocol. The idea is to provide liquidity and use the LP tokens to farm even more rewards. Here's how you take full advantage of the features on ShibaSwap.
First off, you need to provide liquidity to one of the pairs on ShibaSwap. This is a moderately advanced method as you need to pay attention to the overall pool liquidity and adjust your risk. On the other hand, providing liquidity is a simple way to earn passive income from the transaction fees.
Open the ShibaSwap app
Navigate to the Dig page
Click on the "Provide Liquidity" option
Select the two tokens you wish to add into liquidity and the amount
Confirm the transaction
Profit
Congrats! Now that you have provided liquidity LP tokens representing your position have been deposited in your wallet. LP tokens represent your position in the liquidity pool and they passively accumulate the transaction fees for the respective pool. Once you decide to exit the LP position, your tokens will be sent to your wallet along with the accrued fees.
ShibaSwap Woof
If you want to multiply your profits, then head over to the Woof page on ShibaSwap. At its core, Woof represents token farming. In order to farm for more rewards, you will need to stake the LP tokens.
Here's how it works:
Navigate to the Woof page
Click on the "Farm Tokens!" button
select the corresponding pair from the list on the left side of the page
Click Approve to approve your LP tokens for use on ShibaSwap
Deposit
On the right side of the page you will see your cumulative and archived rewards which can be Woofed (claimed) and deposited directly into your wallet. Simply click the WOOF button to claim the available rewards, which will initiate a transaction in your wallet to receive your rewards.
ShibaSwap Bury
ShibaSwap allows you to stake tokens to earn Woof Returns proportionally to your contribution to the pool. When you stake Shib, Leash, or Bone, you will receive xSHIB, xLEASH, or tBONE. Those tokens represent your share of the pool.
Woof Returns are distributed weekly, making it a relatively predictable source of profits. The bigger the share of the pool, the bigger the rewards!
Here's how you stake on ShibaSwap:
Navigate to the Bury page
Choose between burying SHIB, LEASH, or BONE
Input the amount of tokens to stake
Approve the tokens
Stake the tokens
Rewards can be claimed when they are available on the Woof Page.
Price Prediction for SHIB: Can it hit $1000?
Buying and hodling SHIB — the native token of Shiba Inu — is one way of potentially making money on SHIB.
By looking at its current price, it’s natural to think about the chance of SHIB hitting $1000 per token. This can happen sooner, or way in the future, and is determined by a couple of ever changing factors.
Let’s examine the potential growth of the SHIB token by analyzing its tokenomics. SHIB’s current market cap sits comfortably at ${MARKET_CAP}. With {CIRCULATING_SUPPLY} SHIB tokens being in circulation today, that means a price of {PRICE} per SHIB.
How did we come to that calculation? It’s quite easy, the price of a SHIB token is equal to its current market cap divided by the number of tokens in circulation. Dividing ${MARKET_CAP} by {CIRCULATING_SUPPLY} gives us a result of {PRICE} for each SHIB coin.
By changing the order in the simple formula above we can use it to calculate other things as well. This helps us a lot because we can deduce the market cap of SHIB at different token prices. Then, we can use the result to compare it to the current state of the network and see what would be required for SHIB to hit that price.
At a price of $1000 per token, that means the current market cap of SHIB would equal ${{CIRCULATING_SUPPLY} * 1000}. Remember that we arrived at this number by multiplying the amount of circulating tokens by $1000.
Now let’s shift our attention to the fully diluted market cap.
Some blockchains may have their tokenomics built in a way that only a small percentage of tokens are circulating at the beginning. This can be misleading because we don’t have the full picture and only take into account the current number of coins released in the market.
The fully diluted market cap represents the total value of a coin if all tokens were in circulation. SHIB’s whole supply of tokens is {MAX_SUPPLY - TOTAL_SUPPLY + CIRCULATING_SUPPLY} SHIB which means that no more coins above that number will ever be created.
These tokens are not created at the discretion of a specific entity. They are created automatically by the network to reward different actors that keep it secure.
How does this impact the price of SHIB? Taking into account the current price of a SHIB token, that would result in a fully diluted market cap of ${MAX_SUPPLY - TOTAL_SUPPLY + CIRCULATING_SUPPLY * PRICE}. SHIB coins that have been burned are not taken into consideration because they have been permanently removed from circulation.
Whether it seems gigantic or not, the number we came to above only takes into account the current price of a SHIB token. Doing the same calculation but with a price of $1000 gives us a result of ${{MAX_SUPPLY - TOTAL_SUPPLY + CIRCULATING_SUPPLY} * 1000} for the SHIB protocol fully diluted market cap.
These are all crucial details to know when calculating if SHIB can reach the price of $1000 per token. If the diluted market capitalization is way too high, the token has little room left to grow. Blockchains in general have no cap on the value they can reach, whether that number seems possible it’s totally up to you.
The future of SHIB depends solely on its growth as a network used by tens and hundreds of millions of users.
If you’re looking to add some SHIB to your portfolio, the most trusted places to get some are Binance and Coinbase.
