Shibarium, a layer-2 blockchain solution built on the Ethereum network, was created with the intention of fostering the development of the Shiba Inu ecosystem. Its primary goals included reducing transaction costs, improving speed, and increasing scalability. Since its inception a year ago, Shibarium has achieved significant milestones, processing over 418 million transactions and reaching 400 million transactions in March 2024.
While Shibarium has made remarkable progress in the past year, there have been recent setbacks. Daily transactions, which were once in the millions, have now dropped significantly, with only one instance of exceeding 20,000 transactions in the past few months. The network has processed close to 6.5 million blocks and has just under 2 million wallet addresses.
Key Upgrades and Hard Forks
The team behind Shibarium has implemented key upgrades through three hard forks: Delhi, Indore, and Shanghai. These upgrades were aimed at improving user experience, transaction speed, and network efficiency. Additionally, the introduction of tokens such as KNINE, BAD, and the recently launched HOCHI has brought more flexibility to the ecosystem.
Ongoing Enhancements
In the past several months, Shibarium has undergone three additional upgrades to enhance its functionality. An updated user interface was introduced in April to improve compatibility with popular self-custody wallets. A hard fork implemented quicker block processing times to benefit developers and innovators. Most recently, a “Burn Portal” was introduced to reduce the circulating supply of SHIB tokens.
The Burn Portal in Shibarium works by sending a portion of SHIB tokens to a null address, effectively reducing the token’s supply. Unlike the original burn mechanism by the Shiba Inu team, Shibarium utilizes BONE tokens as the governance token for the ecosystem. Users need to accumulate at least 100 BONE tokens to initiate a burn, with a portion of the gas fees paid in BONE used to purchase SHIB tokens for burning.
Shibarium has made significant strides in the past year, processing millions of transactions and introducing key upgrades to enhance its network performance. However, recent setbacks in daily transactions raise concerns about the platform’s sustainability. Moving forward, Shibarium will need to address these issues while continuing to innovate and improve its ecosystem for its users. Keep an eye on Shibarium for the latest updates and developments in the network.