After months of testing, millions of users participating and 21 million wallets created, Shiba Inu launched Shibarium mainnet, an Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution, on August 16.
Shibarium is built on a new consensus mechanism called Proof of Participation (PoP), which works by selecting validators in proportion to the amount of the relevant cryptocurrency they hold. This is done to avoid the computational cost of proof-of-work schemes. The new L2 blockchain solution is designed to interface with the main Ethereum layer 1 blockchain, providing a more scalable and cost-effective transaction platform.
Shiba Inu (SHIB) has risen in popularity during the 2020-2021 bull run, even surpassing the OG meme cryptocurrency Dogecoin (DOGE) at one point. However, it failed to sustain gains for long, losing more than 80% of its valuation during the bear market.
The drop in price hasn’t stopped the Shiba Inu community, which has built a decentralized ecosystem around cryptocurrencies, including decentralized exchange ShibaSwap and native token BONE, as well as Metaverse and Web3 games. The price of SHIB also surged to new multi-week highs due to the launch of Shibarium.
Ahead of the mainnet launch, Shiba Inu’s lead developer (pen name Shytoshi Kusama) noted that L2 was already gaining a lot of traction from the new project. In a post on X (formerly known as Twitter), the developer shared screenshots of companies currently developing on Shibarium, indicating that more than 100 companies are already using it.
builders #Shibarium
There are already so many projects!Summer in #Shibarium pic.twitter.com/rn3PZvTkpV
— Black Zhijun JPN (@kuro_9696_9696) August 15, 2023
In an exclusive conversation with Cointelegraph, Kusama noted that many in the tech world are talking about “apps for everything,” but these innovations must be done from a community and decentralized perspective. He added that Shibarium incorporates these principles into its operations while respecting the “principles of decentralization, interoperability and user-centered design of the blockchain and technology space in general.”
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Kusama further elaborated and stated that the validator and delegator aspects of the new L2 will keep Shibarium decentralized, but the real innovation lies in the framework, governance and constitution to help manage the technical, community, conservation and innovation aspects of the ecosystem.
“By using Shibarium for governance in this system, coupled with a self-sovereign identity to ensure high-quality membership (Shihibizenship), a virtual universe as our territory, and the ability to collaborate with other like-minded nations, we effectively shatter the nation status and rebuilt the country based on Shib’s decentralized ethos!”
Shibarium will leverage Heimdall validators and Bor block producing nodes, much like the Polygon ecosystem. Heimdall will be based on the Tendermint consensus engine, while Bor will be fully interoperable with the Ethereum Virtual Machine.
Users must lock 10,000 BONE in the Shibarium network to become a validator. 21 million BONEs will be reserved as rewards for validators and delegators within the Shibarium ecosystem and used to pay authorized Gas fees.
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