Shiba Inu (SHIB) is a cryptocurrency that experienced a meteoric rise in popularity and value in 2021, mostly because of its unique and funky theme.
Developed by a pseudonymous programmer called Ryoshi, Shiba Inu is named after a Japanese breed of dog and is billed as a “Dogecoin killer” by its fans. The currency has been in existence since 2020 and is one of the top cryptocurrencies by market capitalisation.
Shiba Inu aims to provide greater utility to its owners by offering DeFi opportunities on a peer-to-peer platform.
What is Shiba Inu?
Shiba Inu coin is an ERC-20 token which means that it does not have its own blockchain and runs on Ethereum. One of the reasons Ryoshi launched Shiba Inu as an ERC-token is that the Ethereum blockchain is well-established, transparent, and secure.
Shiba Inu’s ecosystem incorporates a multitude of DeFi opportunities including NFTs, smart contracts, liquidity mining, etc. Its community releases NFTs called “shiboshis”.
There is a total supply of 1 quadrillion SHIB tokens. About 50% of its supply was locked in the Uniswap SHIB/ETH Pool, a type of exchange where you can deposit assets into liquidity pools so that other investors can trade against it.
Like other Ethereum tokens, you can mine SHIB with dedicated hardware. By validating transactions and adding new blocks on the Shiba Inu protocol, miners are rewarded SHIB tokens. However, the mining is only profitable if the value of rewarded SHIB tokens exceeds the cost of mining that includes equipment cost, operational cost, and mining pool charges.
