ShibaSwap has announced an “imminent launch” of the Shibarium Layer 2 network on its blog. Shiba Inu considers itself easy for amateurs to use for learning about cryptocurrency. Amidst a glut of Ethereum sidechains, Shibarium L2 stands out as a multi-blockchain network with several new features to highlight. 

What is Shibarium?

Shibarium is a layer 2 blockchain built on the ShibaSwap layer 1 network. What makes Shibarium’s layer 2 unique is that it is not just another sidechain built on Ethereum, it is an off-chain solution of many blockchains. 

Layer 2 will incorporate ShibaSwap’s other two ecosystem tokens, SHIB and LEASH, which will likely have their own use cases buttressed after layer 2 is released. Validators and Delegators will be rewarded for enforcing the blockchain with the network’s BONE token and soon-to-be-deployed TREAT token.

Blockchain features

1. Gas fees 

   ShibaSwap’s native BONE token has been issued to process and pay gas (transaction) fees on the network. Gas fees are expected to be lower than current gas fees on Ethereum, but the team has not announced a price point as they are waiting to analyze and ensure network operability.

2. Burn mechanics

   ShibaSwap is implementing a Burn Portal to burn an as yet unspecified amount of SHIB on all transactions. According to the blog post, the burn process will be conducted in the “base gas fees” and will “occur every time a transaction is made on the network.” More information on the Burn Portal is said to be announced in a future blog post.

3. Validators

   Validators are strictly limited to 100 slots in an attempt to provide a capped amount of the best, most trusted network participants. Validators are selected through an auction and will operate nodes, engage in consensus, and commit checkpoints with Ethereum. 

   Validators must stake a minimum of 10,000 BONE tokens by the staking management contracts that are deployed on the Ethereum mainnet. If a Validator acts in a corrupt manner the blog post says they will, “run the risk of losing some of all of their stake.” 

4. Delegators 

   Participants who want to support the protocol but do not want to run a node can become Delegators. Their job is to lend their BONE tokens to validator nodes and select validators to certify transactions. 

   ShibaSwap refers to this added part of the consensus mechanism as the DPoS, “delegated proof of stake”. However, if a Validator commits any malicious activity, the Delegator runs the risk of losing the tokens they have committed to that Validator’s node.

5. Transactions Per Second (TPS)

   As for transaction speeds, the blog post notes that the team is not disclosing the information at this time as they are still working on optimizing network performance. However, the post states, “the range of transactions per second will be comparable to other established networks.”

‘Imminent launch’

The ShibaSwap team is quick to emphasize in their blog post that the Shibarium upgrade has an ‘imminent launch’ but will not specify an exact date; they only specify the date as ‘soon’. ShibaSwap’s goal with the Shibarium L2 upgrade is meant to improve the experience for both users and developers which, in turn, will improve dApps, GameFi, and the metaverse. 

How the Shibarium L2 blockchain fairs with users and developers remain to be seen. As for the market itself, bulls have pushed the price of SHIB up 20.4% over the last 7 days. SHIB had a January 15 low of $0.00000990 before bouncing back to $0.00001045 at press time.