Shiba Inu developers confirm ongoing work on Shibarium burn portal

a gold coin with a dog face on it – Shiba Inu coin concept. – unsplash

The core development team behind the popular meme coin Shiba Inu has confirmed they are building a token burn portal for the upcoming Shibarium layer-2 scaling solution. This confirmation provides insight into the future roadmap for Shibarium as the team prepares to deploy updates to the protocol.

Lead Shiba Inu developer Shytoshi Kusama confirmed via Telegram that the Shibarium burn portal is currently in development. Marketing strategist Lucie shared screenshots of Kusama’s comments, where he acknowledged the portal is progressing but emphasized that increasing adoption is the primary goal.

Burning tokens is an essential strategy used by cryptocurrencies like Shiba Inu to remove tokens from circulation permanently. By reducing the overall supply, the value of the remaining tokens may increase due to principles of scarcity and demand.

Upcoming Shibarium features

In addition to the burn portal, the developers behind the Shibarium layer-2 solution have hinted at several other features coming down the pipeline.

One of these is onboarding more validators to help secure the network. By increasing the number of validators responsible for processing transactions and adding blocks, the team aims to decentralize the network further while improving security.

The developers have also indicated they will revoke the contract address for the native Bone Shibaswap token that powers Shibarium. This significant step will allow the team to fully customize the token’s mechanics and economics specifically for use as a gas token on Shibarium.

The developers have continued iterating on Shibarium following an initial failed launch attempt in August 2022. With the protocol now live and generating blocks as planned, the burn portal and other new features will further expand capabilities.

Some additional features that are being introduced include a new monitoring system and additional safeguards to manage high levels of traffic effectively. In addition, the platform recently underwent an extensive testing period, which saw a reported 21 million users.

Various cryptocurrency projects have incorporated token burning into their protocols. One approach involves redirecting a portion of transaction fees from the network to a designated burn address rather than distributing them as rewards.

In the case of Shibarium, the dedicated burn portal will allow users to voluntarily burn Shiba Inu tokens, likely in exchange for rewards. This community-driven approach may rapidly accelerate the burn rate.

Notable examples of token burns

In May 2021, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin burned around 410 trillion SHIB tokens, equal to 40 percent of the total supply. Buterin had received 50 percent of the one quadrillion SHIB tokens at launch from the anonymous founders.

By burning his massive allocation, Buterin helped increase the value of the remaining tokens and removed his outsized control over the ecosystem. The price of SHIB rose nearly 40 percent following the announcement of the massive token burn.

Another major token burn example is Binance Coin (BNB), which runs on the Binance Smart Chain. When BNB first launched in 2017, the team committed to removing 100 million BNB tokens from circulation through quarterly coin burns. As of September 2022, BNB has conducted 23 coin burns, removing over 2 million BNB from circulation. These scheduled burns help control BNB’s token supply and increase its value over time.

Ethereum also instituted a token-burning mechanism in August 2021 called EIP-1559. A portion of the fees paid to validate transactions on Ethereum are now burned instead of paid to miners. Over 3.2 million ETH worth nearly $6 billion has been burned. This ETH burn helps make Ethereum more deflationary as the network transitions to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism.