Shibarium Transactions Crash Almost 50%, Shiba Inu Price Wobbles

The Shiba Inu layer-2 network Shibarium enjoyed significant success at the end of 2023, crossing several milestones in the process. However, the network looks to be experiencing a cooling-off period following a significant drop in the number of transactions. Shiba Inu (SHIB) also looks to be affected by this development following a notable decline in its price. 

Data from the Shibarium explorer shows that daily transactions on the network have significantly dropped since the new year began. Only just over 4 million transactions were processed on both January 2 and 3. This decline is notable because Shibarium was averaging over 7 million transactions for most of December last year. 

December 29 was the last time that Shibarium saw over 7 million daily transactions. Since then, it has been on a downward slope, dropping to 6 million and 5 million on December 30 and 31, respectively. 

It looked like things were going to pick back up as daily transactions on the network rose back to over 6 million on January 1. However, that was not the case, as the downtrend continued the next day. 

The number of daily transactions on the layer-2 network has become more significant since Shibarium’s role in SHIB’s growth became apparent. The Shibarium team has committed to converting some of the transaction fees made from the network to SHIB and burning those tokens. As such, more transactions on the network translates to more SHIB burns. 

These SHIB burns have the potential to positively impact SHIB’s price since the crypto token’s value is likely to increase as more of it gets out of circulation. So far, over 410 trillion SHIB has been sent to Shiba Inu’s burn wallet, with Shibarium contributing a huge chunk to that figure. 

Meanwhile, recent development suggests that the Shiba Inu team may be looking to increase BONE’s utility. For some time now, the SHIB token has so far been the center of attention in the Shiba Inu ecosystem. However, the BONE token looks to be joining the mix as Shiba Inu’s Marketing Lead, Lucie, has recently turned her attention to promoting the Dog coin. 

In an X (formerly Twitter) post, Lucie mentioned several projects that were set to launch on the layer-2 network and noted how users would need the Dog coin to access these projects. BONE, which was initially created as the native token for ShibaSwap has gone on to enjoy greater utility since Shibarium launched. 

BONE happens to be the gas token for the layer-2 network. Notably, an increase in BONE’s price could also affect the SHIB burns since the team gets to acquire and burn more of the meme coin.

At the time of writing, SHIB is trading at around $0.000009574, down over 9% in the last 24 hours, according to data from CoinMarketCap.