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A consortium of prominent crypto VCs has backed meme coin Shiba Inu (SHIB) to the tune of $12 million for a stake in the ecosystem’s upcoming “layer three” blockchain—a stake that will come in the form of a new TREAT token.
Investors include Animoca Brands, Polygon Ventures, DWF Ventures, Spirit Dao, and others.
“Through the involvement of these venture capital firms and their strategic partners, we are expanding not only our network of trusted partners, but also exponentially increasing what Shiba Inu can truly be capable of for our community,” said Shiba Inu’s pseudonymous lead developer “Shytoshi Kusama” in a Monday press release.
TREAT is the planned “utility and governance token” of the nascent chain, and the SHIB ecosystem’s “final non-stable token,” the organizing team declared.
Shiba Inu’s new, yet unnamed TREAT blockchain will be a so-called “layer three” network on Shibarium, a scalability-focused layer-2 network that is itself built atop Ethereum.
Shibarium already has its own native token called BONE, which launched in July 2021, though the Shibarium bridge itself was not fully functional until August of last year. The ecosystem also features a limited supply token called LEASH that rewards Shiba Inu loyalists with benefits—including more BONE tokens.
Improving upon Shibarium, the TREAT blockchain will feature “Fully Homomorphic Encryption” (FHE), increasing the privacy of the network’s transactions. IBM describes FHE as “an innovative technology that can help you achieve zero trust by unlocking the value of data on untrusted domains without needing to decrypt it.”
Some fake versions of TREAT are already appearing on CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko, but the real version will be minted by The Shiba Inu Mint S.A. on a yet-to-be-announced date.
SHIB’s price remained flat on Monday, but has surged 19% on the week. It is currently the 11th largest crypto by market capitalization at $15.6 billion, only three spots behind its Dogecoin (DOGE), its leading dog-themed predecessor.
Both Doge and SHIB surged earlier this year alongside other meme coins as indirect beneficiaries of the Bitcoin spot ETF launch in January. In early March, Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan said he expects these altcoins to continue rising as long as demand for the ETFs persists.
“Crypto natives make money in Bitcoin, feel rich, and then look for more speculative assets to invest in,” he explained at the time.