The Shiba Inu Shibarium mainnet is officially live, with the launch happening today after months of anticipation amongst the SHIB Army. Shibarium was unveiled at the Blockchain Futurist Conference in Canada by Shytoshi Kusama, the lead developer of SHIB.
“The Shibarium mainnet is now ready to on-board millions who are interested in shaping a new future that honors the principles of decentralization,” developers said in a statement. The launch follows a successful testnet phase that generated a community of over 21 million user wallets.
Following the tease by Kusama at the event, there was a transfer of billions of SHIB. Data from Etherscan shows that these whales have also been withdrawing billions of SHIB from exchanges today.
Despite the hype around the launch finally culminating in its release, SHIB has seen a downward trend in price over the last 24 hours. Data from CoinMarketCap shows that Shiba Inu’s price is down by over 8% in the past day.
Also read: Shiba Inu: Shytoshi Kusama’s Shibarium Launch Hint Sparks Transfer of 33 Billion SHIB
The Shibarium launch is the next step for Shiba Inu and its developers to push SHIB as a leading blockchain, not just a popular meme coin. It joins an increasingly crowded blockchain landscape with over 50 competing blockchains looking to make a name for themselves. The network will utilize BONE, TREAT, SHIB, and LEASH tokens for applications built on the blockchain. As a result, the prices of these tokens may rise as demand increases.