Is the Shiba crypto project underrated?

Shiba crypto has become a mainstay in the blockchain-based economy due to the hype its community members, collectively called the SHIB Army, have conferred on the project.

Introduced into the saturated cryptocurrency market in August 2020, a period when the centralized and decentralized finance markets were recovering from the lows suffering during the peak of the coronavirus pandemic (March and April) by Ryoshi, the "Shiba Inu Ecosystem" is one of the most popular whitepapers in the industry.

Almost three years after its introduction, the project has experienced several highs and lows in terms of making millionaires and also plunging the portfolios of millions of others into several losses. 

Below, we take an in-depth look at the pros and cons of Ryoshi's innovation that will serve as a thesis to measure whether Shiba crypto remains one of the most underrated projects in the sector.

Shiba crypto has surpassed its meme status

Shiba crypto was introduced into a market of more than 10,000 cryptocurrencies in 2020 to poke fun at the meme-inspired digital currency Dogecoin (DOGE), a project Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer launched in 2013. 

Before 2020, many developers tried to question DOGE's status as the largest meme coin by market capitalization. 

Unfortunately, they all failed to pose a strong test to the dominance of a coin that created several millionaires along the way. 

Unlike the others, including Dogecoin, which was also created to poke fun at the idea of Satoshi Nakamoto introducing Bitcoin (BTC) to challenge centralized finance (CeFi), Shiba has a strong infrastructure to lead the innovation into the next phase of this emerging sector. 

While Dogecoin remains on an independent blockchain that relies on the layer one infrastructure of processing transactions, Shiba has moved on to other areas, such as decentralized finance (DeFi) and the Metaverse. 

This has been made possible in large part thanks to the project’s association with Ethereum, the most popular smart contracts-backed blockchain in the industry to date. 

Despite the significant reduction in total value locked (TVL) across the sector, Ethereum remains the largest DeFi chain by TVL, with approximately $26 billion, as of 12 July 2023. 

Thousands of decentralized applications (DApps) in lending, yield aggregation, exchange, and insurance have been added to the market thanks to the possibilities of Ethereum.

Among them is ShibaSwap, the native decentralized exchange (DEX) of the Shiba Inu Ecosystem that provides a great way for the swapping of SHIB tokens safely and securely. 

ShibaSwap joined a new area of cryptocurrency trading platforms dominated by Uniswap, the largest DEX by trading volume, and PancakeSwap, the second-largest DEX by trading volume.

Having seen an opportunity to draw millions onto its platform, the developers added several features to help users earn diverse passive income. Among them are dig (liquidity), bury (staking), and Shiboshis (NFTs). 

While many DEXs such as Balancer, DODO, BiSwap, QuickSwap, Synthetix, ApeSwap, SpookySwap, Thena, Maverick, Clipper, and SushiSwap records awesome monthly trading volumes, the consistent innovation being thrown at ShibaSwap has propelled the DApp to see a minimum of $50 million in monthly trading volume. 

With millions of users' increasing demand for anonymity, consistent upgrades of ShibaSwap, which opens the DApp to trading many cryptocurrencies and more digital collections instead of the project's products, could propel the DEX to new milestones in the future.

## Shiba crypto has made its way into the Metaverse

The Metaverse has been described by many as the next iteration of the internet, where we transition to Web3 from our current Web2 status.

This means that humans can experience life through single, shared, immersive, persistent, and three-dimensional (3D) spaces using AR (augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality) technologies. 

The potential impact of this emerging space has seen Mark Zuckerberg, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the parent company that owns Facebook, Threads, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, Oculus Quest, Horizon Worlds, Workplace, and Mapillary, rebrand his firm's name to Meta Platforms Inc. 

Metaverse's impact has extended beyond the social media sector to many facets of our daily public lives. 

In June 2022, Ajman Police in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced that citizens could meet and interact with them via the Metaverse. Avatars of officers have been made active to answer the queries of residents.

The buzz around the Metaverse deepened in April 2022 when Yuga Labs, the development team behind the popular NFT collection Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), announced a new collection borne out of what it called the Otherside Metaverse. 

This Metaverse gave birth to NFTs called Otherdeeds, which have generated more than $1 billion in sales volume. 

SHIB has not left its community behind and also has Shib the Metaverse, a virtual representation of the project’s collective history aimed at helping the army collect in-game resources, generate rewards, and earn consistent passive income. 

Research and Markets forecast the global metaverse market to grow by more than $175 billion by 2027. While projects like Illuvium, Roblox, Decentraland, and Axie Infinity were mentioned, Shib remains one of the dark horses that can contribute to reaching the forecasted valuation.

Shiba crypto launches Shibarium in August

Many crypto projects, such as Binance and TRON, started on Ethereum but later branched out to individual chains to boost the functionality of their respective protocols.

Ryoshi and his team have made plans to upgrade their protocol with the launch of Shibarium in August 2023. 

This is a layer two blockchain network built on Vitalik Buterin’s chain for the Shiba Inu project. With this, the project tagged as a Dogecoin Killer due to its meme status will become a complete ecosystem.

Some of the advantages of Shibarium include but are not limited to seamless DApp development, increased token utility, lower fees, and improved scalability (higher transaction speeds).

Will the new ecosystem be safe to use? 

Yes, the protocol will be safe to use, according to Certik, a security-focused platform that monitors and analyzes DeFi projects and blockchain protocols. 

Certik gave the project a security score of 90.72, weighted on code security, fundamental health, operational resilience, governance strength, market stability, and community trust.

With millions of SHIB wallet addresses holding onto their tokens and a thriving ecosystem, Shiba crypto is one of the most underrated projects. And so is its native asset SHIB.