From meme coin to art tokenization: the role of Shiba Inu in the RWA market
The tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) has grown from a niche segment into a massive sector of the crypto market. According to CoinGecko, the market capitalization of RWA projects in August 2025 exceeded $53 billion. And according to Boston Consulting Group estimates, by 2030, the RWA market volume will reach $16 trillion.
Even projects that previously had no connection to this sector have joined RWA. Shiba Inu was no exception, entering RWA with the launch of the Shiba Artist Incubator platform.
From meme coin to an art tokenization tool
The Shiba Inu team began its journey into tokenization with a simple collectible card game called Shiba Eternity, which allows players to compete with each other and earn valuable trophies when they win.
However, after integration with its own layer-2 (L2) network Shibarium, the game evolved into a full-fledged tool that allows users to turn digital assets into non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which can then be traded on the secondary market. Moreover, Shiba Eternity became one of the few GameFi projects with its own blockchain.
The development of the Shiba Inu ecosystem and the emergence of new decentralized tools led to a surge of activity on Shibarium. According to the ShibariumScan explorer, as of August 2025, the L2 network processes more than 2.4 million transactions per day, and the total number of wallets exceeded 268 million.
The most significant surge of activity on Shibarium was recorded in the last quarter of 2024, when the number of daily transactions grew about 30 times in just a few weeks amid the rising popularity of Shiba Eternity and other ecosystem projects.
Experts note that the Shiba Inu ecosystem attracts new players and users with low fees (less than $0.001 per transaction) and high liquidity. SHIB is the second-largest memecoin on the crypto market, with a capitalization exceeding $7.3 billion as of August 2025.
The next step towards asset tokenization was the launch of the Shiba Artist Incubator NFT platform, which allowed artists and SHIB community members to showcase their works (SHIB-Art) in the form of non-fungible tokens.
According to Delphi Digital analyst Matthew Hughes, the Shiba Artist Incubator is an attempt to create a sustainable model for art monetization.
Experts predict that by the end of 2026, the Shiba Artist Incubator could handle 15% of all tokenized art assets, increasing Shiba Inu's market capitalization by 40–60% due to demand for SHIB-Art.
By then, the Shiba Inu incubator could reduce the average entry threshold to the art market to $5, attracting 2 million new users from emerging markets (India, Nigeria, Brazil). By comparison, the average entry threshold in the Ethereum ecosystem is about $500.
Prospects and barriers for the art asset market
Although most investors are optimistic about the prospects of tokenized art, some note that the main barrier to the development of art assets such as SHIB-Art may be regulatory uncertainty and other issues that create high costs for RWA projects.
In the EU and the US, tokenized assets are classified as securities, which requires licensing for their issuers. According to PwC, 60% of RWA projects spend up to 30% of their revenues just on compliance.
Analysts also predict that in 2025–2026, about 40% of RWA projects may disappear due to regulatory pressure.
Another issue is the verification of artworks to confirm their authenticity. Analysts believe this problem could be solved by integrating AI tools. Experts estimate that errors in evaluation could lead to a 15–20% drop in token value.
Growing competition should also not be overlooked, such as the launch of projects like Fractional.art on Solana, which is gaining market share in the RWA sector.
However, it should be taken into account that the Shiba Inu NFT incubator does not exist in isolation — it has its own ecosystem, which includes not only the L2 network Shibarium, but also the Shibaverse metaverse and the ShibaSwap decentralized exchange.
This enables multiple use cases for Shiba Inu's tokenized art assets. In addition, initiatives like tokenized art can revive the ecosystem affected by the crypto market crash of 2022. For example, the total value locked (TVL) on the ShibaSwap DEX collapsed from $1.75 billion to $32 million within a year after peaking in 2021.
Shiba Inu has every chance to become one of the leaders of the tokenized art market among RWA projects, provided there is no intense regulatory pressure and the real asset segment continues to grow.
The Shiba Art Incubator project could become real proof that even a simple memecoin like SHIB can turn into a strong catalyst in a field such as tokenized art.