Key takeaways:
- The Shiba Inu team has announced in a recent blog post that the launch of Shibarum is “imminent”
- Shibarium is a layer 2 solution aimed at increasing transaction speed and lowering costs, enabling NFT and gaming use cases
- The BONE token will be used as a gas currency, while each Shibarium transaction will burn SHIB and thus create a deflationary pressure
Shibarium to bring speed and cost improvements, use BONE for crypto rewards
In a blog post published on January 15, the Shiba Inu team outlined what we can expect from Shibarium, the upcoming Layer 2 solution that will make transactions in the Shiba Inu ecosystem both faster and cheaper.
Layer 2 refers to solutions that are built on top of a blockchain’s base layer (or “layer 1”) in order to improve scalability, reduce transaction fees, and increase overall efficiency. These solutions include things like off-chain transactions, state channels, and sidechains.
Off-chain transactions, for example, are transactions that take place outside of the blockchain itself, but are still securely anchored to it. This allows for faster and cheaper transactions, as they do not need to be recorded on the blockchain’s ledger. Shibarium falls squarely into this category of L2s.
“This layer aims, as a protocol, to work on top of existing blockchain networks, allowing for faster, cheaper, and more private transactions to be processed off-chain, while still relying on the security of the underlying blockchain,” the team explained.
The team also said that BONE would serve as the native gas token for facilitating the transactions within Shibarium. Initially, BONE was used as a governance tool within the Shiba Inu ecosystem, but now it seems that it will take on a more prominent role. The team explained:
“As previously announced, $BONE is the native token selected to pay for gas transactions and reward Validators and Delegators within the Shibarium protocol. Since its birth in July 2021, its main function has been linked to governance, but now also the much anticipated Shibarium launch.”
In addition, the team said that each Shibarium transaction would burn SHIB, which many believe could be the catalyst for a repeat of Shiba Inu’s 2021 bull run.
Following the announcement, both BONE and SHIB tokens saw significant moves to the upside, with the former gaining 29% in the past week and the latter increasing by 34%.
