Contributor
Shiba Inu said it has closed a $12 million round to fund the development of a new L3 blockchain focused on privacy. The announcement Monday caps an eventful few weeks when the dog-themed meme coin had a terrific run in the market while also tying up with partners to offer increased convenience and utility to its fiercely loyal fans nicknamed the Shib Army.
The funding, from a clutch of big name investors — Mechanism Capital, Big Brain Holdings, Cypher Capital, Shima Capital, DWF Ventures, Morningstar Ventures, Hercules Ventures, Animoca Brands, Foresight Ventures, Comma3 Ventures, Woodstock Fund, Polygon Ventures, Stake Capital, Illuminati Digital Capital, Primal Capital, STIX, and Spirit Dao — was raised through the sale of the $TREAT utility token.
“What we did is that we made sure that some of the most powerful people in the world have skin in our game, so to speak,” Shiba Inu’s pseudonymous lead developer Shytoshi Kusama told The Street.
The new layer-3 network will be focused on privacy and will use $TREAT as its governance and utility token, much like $BONE works as the gas fee token on the Shibarium L2 chain.
Shiba Inu hopes these privacy focused enhancements will help expand its reach beyond its existing crypto users. It has been strategically adding pieces of technology and partnerships to increase its allure to users as blockchains evolve at warp speed, increasing competition for onboarding new users still outside of the crypto ecosystem.
Earlier this year, Shiba Inu partnered with Paris-based Zama to bring its encryption tools that leverage Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) to bolster privacy across the chain and ensure transactional confidentiality, user interactions, and data privacy. It also partnered with D3 to offer *shib domain names to users, to enable seamless integration between Web2 and Web3.
“It’s wonderful to see that we are stepping closer and innovating more,” Shiba Inu marketing lead who goes by the X handle @LucieSHIB said in a statement to The Shib Daily. “Shib will never stop growing as we will see more people utilize Shibarium. The impact of TREAT will be bigger than many realize, benefiting the whole Shibarmy. Layer 3 will enhance and put Shibarium in a new spotlight.”
TREAT has not yet been released but will be minted by Shiba Inu Mint S.A., a corporation based in Panama. The funds will also be used to expand security measures and regulatory compliance, ensuring the long-term growth and sustainability of the Shiba Inu ecosystem.
Earlier in the day, Kusama had teased about a mysterious deal, which had the Shib Army all excited to know what was cooking.
