What happened
Many investors' favorite meme token Shiba Inu (SHIB 6.61%) is once again making big moves in today's session. As of 1 p.m. ET, Shiba Inu has put forward a rather impressive 7.4% 24-hour move. That move is good enough to make Shiba Inu the best-performing cryptocurrency out of the 40 largest coins ranked by market capitalization.
This move appears to be tied to enthusiasm around the upcoming relaunch of Shibarium, Shiba Inu's layer-2 scaling solution. The team behind Shiba Inu has reportedly been working on testing its scaling network for the past two days in a bid to optimize and enhance Shibarium, and get it ready for show time.
So what
Last week, Shiba Inu launched Shibarium, which hit problems out of the gate. Developers cited too much volume and activity upon launch, but essentially this scaling solution failed to do what it was supposed to, ultimately failing to produce blocks at some point. So, back to the chopping block went developers, looking to improve upon what clearly was a flawed product released initially.
Shibarium's fourth upgrade reportedly took place yesterday, and there's anticipation building that this layer-2 network may be up and running in the next few days. Bulls appear to be taking the view that, if things can be smoothed out, perhaps the sort of price spike many were expecting will simply be delayed.
Now what
Shiba Inu, like many of the meme token projects that popped up during the bubble of 2020 and 2021, has been hit very hard over the better part of two years. Its valuation certainly reflects a community premium, with wallet growth continuing to be rather robust of late. However, outside of the Shiba Inu community, this is a project that appears to be losing interest from the investing public as a whole, given its recent historical price action.
The fact that Shiba Inu's developer team is looking to create value for users via its Shibarium scaling solution is intriguing. The launch was botched, but that's not to say there's nothing worthwhile there. I'm not holding my breath, but I'm going to watch this relaunch closely. There's some outside possibility Shiba Inu's tech may improve to a noteworthy degree. We'll just have to wait and see.