How is Shiba Inu (SHIB) doing: has it cemented its place as the second leading memcoin?
As of 2024, the Shiba Inu cryptocurrency remains the second leading memcoin after Dogecoin. Furthermore, in terms of capitalization, Shiba Inu is now surpassed by once-leading crypto projects such as Chainlink (LINK) and Polkadot (DOT), despite their mature ecosystems and technologies.
Updates to the Shiba Inu protocol and ecosystem
The developers of Shiba Inu are constantly working on improving the ecosystem. Initially, SHIB was just a meme token based on the Ethereum network, but later, its ecosystem included its own DEX exchange, ShibaSwap, and then the Shibarium Layer 2 (L2) blockchain.
In August 2024, the developers of Shiba Inu unveiled a beta version of Shiba Eternity, a game based on the Web3 concept. Shiba Eternity is an updated version of the mobile card game of the same name, powered by Shibarium's L2 solution. Doge Killer (LEASH) token stakers can participate in the closed beta from August 21, 2024, and owners of NFTs released in the Shiba Inu ecosystem can join from September 5. However, the start date of the open beta is still unknown.
In the same month, the creators of Shiba Inu announced plans to launch their decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), through which SHIB meme token holders can participate in managing the project's ecosystem by voting. In addition to SHIB, owners of BONE and LEASH tokens, which belong to the Shiba Inu ecosystem, will be allowed to participate in DAO initiatives.
Shiba Inu market dynamics
Since October 2023, the SHIB cryptocurrency exchange rate has been showing a positive trend amidst the overall growth of the crypto market. After a prolonged correction in 2022-2023, investors, including large investors, began to be active buyers. For example, in December 2023, whales started withdrawing SHIB tokens to their personal (non-custodial) wallets. As a result, according to Glassnode, the number of SHIB tokens on exchange wallets decreased by 4% over the month.
At the same time, analysts at IntoTheBlock noted that the daily growth of new wallets was about 20 times higher than average. At its peak in March 2024, one day saw a record number of about 21,000 new addresses created. This period just coincided with the SHIB cryptocurrency reaching its local ATH.
These dynamics peaked in March 2024, when the SHIB price reached a local maximum of $0.000035. However, this is still 2.5 times lower than the historical maximum (ATH), recorded in October 2021 at $0.000085.
After reaching ATH in March, Shiba Inu's rate gradually declined until it reached $0.000015 in August 2024. This was due to negative stock market events and the distribution of assets to affected investors of bankrupt Mt. Gox and Genesis Global. These events led to the fall of Bitcoin, which pulled almost all altcoins as well.
Future of Shiba Inu
The project continues to develop, and its team is truly community-oriented. Due to this, the Shiba Inu cryptocurrency has not only managed to hold its position but also dislodge several significant players. For example, the same fundamentally strong Polkadot project lost its position to Shiba Inu, clearly showing everyone how important the community is in development.
On August 1, Shiba Inu celebrated its fourth anniversary, which is old enough to establish itself in the crypto market. Many projects, even the biggest ones, have already disappeared from the radar during this time. Bright examples of such projects are:
In August 2024, the Shiba Inu team presented an ambitious roadmap for the project's development, which showed its ecosystem's future expansion. It will include projects such as:
- ShibaHub, a hub for decentralized applications,
- advertising platform WOOFVertise,
- the Shib.io Metaverse,
- the SHY Mode privacy protocol,
- and the Shibdentity identity protocol.