What is Shiba Inu (SHIBA)?

Shiba Inu (SHIBA) is a meme coin that was created by the anonymous Ryoshi, in order to dethrone Dogecoin and be the king of meme coins in the critical world. 

EThe Shiba Inu (SHIBA) token is a meme token launched on the network Ethereum (ETH) that has a clear objective: to dethrone Dogecoin and set a new standard for a meme coin.

However, this new standard for a “meme coin” goes much further than simply throwing out a token or crypto without further ado (as has happened with Dogecoin). In fact, Shiba Inu has a fairly large development community and that has been precisely what has given it great growth and prominence in such a short time.

Shiba Inu, a new meme token

Shiba Inu is a "meme coin" or "meme token" a type of coin that has been created with the clear purpose of being a joke. The creation of this new meme token was the idea of ​​the anonymous «Ryoshi» who, in August 2020, created the smart contract ERC-20 that would give life to Shiba.

In any case, Ryoshi's idea with his meme coin was a very clear one: to dethrone Dogecoin. Ryoshi, from his point of view, saw that DOGE did not offer anything new, thus wasting a huge opportunity to adopt cryptocurrencies.

To achieve this, Ryoshi, who defines himself as “someone without importance and whose identity will disappoint everyone”, decided to create Shiba with a maximum issuance of 999.992.159.191.335,356872165285409628 SHIBA tokens. Subsequently, and after drawing the attention of the crypto community on Twitter, Ryoshi decided to deliver to Vitalik Buterin 50% of all that existence, and leave the other 50% so that he could move in the community, leaving Ryoshi with zero tokens in his possession.

The SHIBA boom begins

Activity on Twitter began to fizz. For one thing, Ryoshi had played the SHIBA release well amid a DOGE boom boom, fueled by Elon Musk's tweets. Along with this, SHIBA began to appear on DEX as Uniswap or SushiSwap, which quickly skyrocketed its use and adoption.

In addition, the idea of ​​expanding SHIBA functionalities with its own DEX, liquidity pool systems and yield farming, attracted even more the attention of the community, who perceived it as an opportunity to obtain good profits, in particular to early adopters and Coin hodlers.

The result: a complete boom that has allowed SHIBA to become one of the 20 largest cryptocurrencies in the world with a market capitalization that exceeds 26 billion dollars. Part of all of this success was in the hands of Buterin, who donated part of his SHIBA holdings to the India Covid Aid Fund. The donation was valued at $ 1.000 billion at the time and, after being sold by India at a bad market moment, it was worth $ 437 million net. On the other hand, Buterin ended up burning the rest of his holdings, leading to a strong rally for this cryptocurrency.

How does Shiba Inu work?

Now, as we mentioned at the beginning, Shiba Inu (SHIBA) is a token on Ethereum that has been built using the ERC-20 standard. This means that it is compatible with every existing Web3 ERC-20 wallet (such as MetaMask). Additionally, this guarantees that the operation of SHIBA and its evolution depend on the development of Ethereum, so that the developers of SHIBA only worry about one thing: offer services that use SHIBA and grant functionality to the token.

Thus, for example, through free software constructions such as Uniswap or SushiSwap, SHIBA could create its own DEX, adapt them to its needs and offer them to the community, reducing the need for development from scratch, while rapidly deploying useful tools to all the token hodlers.

Of the rest, SHIBA is an ERC-20 token like any other token of its type (ex: DAI or USDT) so it does not have special functionalities beyond those provided by Ethereum and its platform.

Options within the Shiba Inu ecosystem

Now, the fact of being an ERC-20 token within Ethereum, allows enormous flexibility when building and integrating services to it. Thanks to this, Shiba Inu currently has interesting options among which we highlight:

ShibaSwap, a DEX focused on SHIBA

ShibaSwap is the name of the decentralized exchange (DEX) fully focused on Shiba Inu. The exchange has a swap, collateralized loan system, liquidity mining, a market for NTFs and yield farming options.

The DEX interface is “shibanified” so that anyone can use it and have all the information they need at their fingertips. In fact, right at the top you can see data as important as the TVL (Total Value Locked or Total Value Blocked) which is generally over 500 million dollars. Also, data on the price of the SHIBA token, LEASH (a token for the governance of SHIBA) and BONE (the rewards token of the DEX).

DoggyDAO, Shiba Inu's DAO

After the initial distribution of tokens by Ryoshi, Ryoshi also renounced control over the smart contract and left control of it in a DAO. To participate in the DAO you need to have in your possession LEASH tokens whose existence is limited to only 100 tokens, which has given it enormous value.

In any case, the role of the DAO is to maintain the good health of the SHIBA ecosystem, a unique endeavor, since other projects (ex: Dogecoin) lack a structure like this. At the moment, DoggyDAO is a project still under construction, although the LEASH token is already in operation and can be acquired under the conditions provided to participate in this system.

Conclusions

Although Shiba Inu began as a "meme" token, many of its Hodlers and defenders think that it is much more than that today. The project has evolved into more than just a token susceptible to pump&dump and massive market manipulation, as was first observed. Features such as the DEX and the DAO give clues that its developers want to cultivate a better SHIBA ecosystem for all those who bet on the project.

Of course, these are two positive efforts in that sense, but much more is needed to consider that the Shiba Inu is no longer a "meme token", but has become a valuable crypto for everyone. In any case, the future of the token is in the hands of its community, its SHIBArmy, and the reaction of the entire crypto community.

Links of interest