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Part 2 of 2 - This is the continuation of my previous article which introduced Meme Coins and gave a comprehensive overview of Dogecoin. I’d recommend reading part 1 first, before diving into this second part. If you missed out on it, click here to take a look!
To recap, a lot of meme coins started surfacing given the parabolic growth of Dogecoin, given that it’s a fun and relatable meme, amplified by social media, further endorsed by Elon Musk. Lastly, non-crypto exchange platforms like Robin Hood provided very easy access to it.
Out of these meme coins flood, there is only one that currently has shown the same hype and potential: Shiba Inu, which is also commonly known as “the Dogecoin killer”.
Let’s dive into a quick introduction about it!
What is Shiba Inu?
An Overview & few Facts:
Shiba Inu is a “meme coin” founded in 2020 by an individual who goes by the pseudonym Ryoshi.
Nobody really knows who he/she is, and it seems that Ryoshi left the project in June 2021, and a community member known by the pseudonym Shytoshi Kusama is now the de facto face of Shiba Inu.
The initial liquidity was provided by an anonymus businessman in Uniswap with 10 ETH.
Shiba Inu is created as an experiment in decentralized government, or in other words, community governance.
It is a project built on the Ethereum network, therefore it benefits from its use cases as well as its robust and fast-growing ecosystem; but at the same time, it does share the same pain points such as the need of paying high gas fees for certain transactions.
In terms of Tokenomics (short for token economics):
SHIB is the flagship token, currently ranking around the top 13th by market cap.
Shiba Inu is built on Ethereum, therefore SHIB is an ERC20 token, which you can read more about here.
It has a maximum supply of 1 quadrillion (which is 1,000,000,000,000,000. Yes, 15 zeros, you counted right). This is a VERY high number, but well, at least there is a cap.
Supply Burn: SHIB has experienced some supply burn, so if you look at its current supply, it’s showing at around half of it.
In terms of distribution, SHIB is more decentralized, with the largest wallet with 4% only. It currently has over 900K holders and counting, without considering the exchange wallets.
Did you know?
The actual reason behind this isn’t clear, but 50% of SHIB was sent to Vitalik Buterin’s wallet, the founder of Ethereum. It’s commonly believed that this was a Marketing move from Shiba Inu’s side to legitimize the token.
The reason why they were able to do this, is that crypto is a transparent space. We can all see Vitalik’s wallet address (the equivalent of a bank account), so technically you could transfer him coins or tokens if you wanted to as well.
Once Vitalik realized he had this amount of token in his wallet, he didn’t want to hold so much “power” over SHIB, and decided to donate some of it to charity, and burnt the majority of it (around 40% of SHIB’s supply), and this is how SHIB’s supply cap went from 1 quadrillion to around half of it.
Burning supply in the crypto world basically means sending it to a dead wallet. This wallet doesn’t have a private key, and therefore nobody can access it, so this crypto will never be able to be used again.
DOGE vs SHIB: who is best?
A lot of people wonder which one is better, so here is a chart I built to summarize and compare both side by side:
The fact that DOGE is a coin, and SHIB is a token makes a huge difference.
In a nutshell, a coin is built on and uses its own blockchain, whereas a token uses someone else’s blockchain as the backbone. And this is relevant because the roadmap and potential of a project has a lot to do with the technical capabilities of the blockchain it’s built on. I actually have a whole article dedicated to it, so if you are interested, click here.
The way I see it, seems like DOGE has a longer established history as it’s been created almost a decade ago and is still standing.
However, I personally like better projects that have a more robust ecosystem and a clear roadmap, with a passionate community behind them, that comes along with a more decentralized structure.
Let’s dive into Shiba Inu’s ecosystem and understand why I’m saying this!
Use Cases & Ecosystem
Being built on Ethereum means that Shiba Inu can leverage the use cases that the network provides, including Smart Contract, Tokens, NFTs, etc.
Introducing ShibaSwap
SHIB has a functional DEX (decentralized exchange), staking and liquidity pools, NFT marketplace, upcoming layer 2 blockchain, and many more planned utilities.
All of these utilities happen on ShibaSwap, which is a magic combination of Defi Platform + NFT Marketplace and more. On ShibaSwap, users can:
“dig” (provide liquidity),
“bury” (stake),
swap tokens,
farm tokens to earn “woof” returns,
access to analytics,
buy, sell and trade Shiba Inu’s unique NFTs collection called “Shiboshis”.
You can also trade Shiboshis at opensea, the largest NFT marketplace. They actually look pretty cool!
Shiba Inu’s token portfolio
You might have noticed that I said SHIB is Shiba Inu’s flagship token. This means that there are more tokens in its ecosystem.
Currently, there are 3 tokens under Shiba Inu:
SHIB - again, it’s an ERC20 token, the flagship and foundational token in the Shiba Inu’s ecosystem. It’s basically the main currency, and everyone can buy/sell/hold SHIB.
LEASH - originally set to be a rebase token against DOGE, it is currently a low supply token that you can use to stake and earn rewards. There are only 107,646 tokens, which contributes to its high price value, contrary to the majority of meme coins.
BONE - this token is given as a reward to stakers and liquidity providers in ShibaSwap. It is also a governance token that will allow the community to vote on upcoming proposals on Shiba Inu’s DAO, the Doggy DAO. Basically, 1 Bone equals 1 vote. There is a total of 250M tokens.
Additionally, seems like Shiba Inu is coming up with their own Stablecoin that will hold the name SHI.
Other Interesting Initiatives
It seems to be quite a lot happening in Shiba Inu. With the risk of overwhelming you guys with information, I actually thought about sharing this because as a dog lover myself, this is actually quite cool:
Shiba Inu Incubator - set up to support the community to cultivate, develop and grow their creativity.
Rescue Association - a non-profit that helps fund shelters to help real-world dogs!
Final Thoughts
Honestly, I was quite impressed with how far Shiba Inu has come, till the point that it doesn’t seem like a meme coin anymore. Having said this, it was only created in 2020, so it’s a bit too soon to tell how.
However, I personally prefer projects with a growing ecosystem and roadmap, clear utilities, and engaged community, as these aspects play a key role in a project’s long-term potential.
Therefore in this Dog Fight, I have a bias for Shiba Inu over Dogecoin.
This marks the end of the meme coins chapters! Thanks for making it this far, and if hope you enjoyed it, do subscribe for more content like this!