Everything you need to know about ShibaSwap and how it can boost the Shiba Inu ecosystem

Over the years, meme coins have grown in popularity and their user base has also seen a rapid expansion. However, there is still one thing most of these coins lack: real utility. Meme coins can be used as a store of value and a mode of payment, but little else besides that.

These coins do not drive an ecosystem and their value is decided largely by culture and community strength. One coin that is looking change this narrative is Shiba Inu.

The coin has found plenty of utility after the launch of the ShibaSwap platform, and this could help propel its valuation in the future. But what is ShibaSwap and how can it boost the Shiba Inu ecosystem? Tag along to find out.

In a nutshell, ShibaSwap acts as the native Ethereum-based decentralized exchange (DEX) of the Shiba Inu project. The platform is a hard fork of the SushiSwap DEX and came into being in July 2021.

It allows users to swap tokens without the need for a central authority, intermediary or counterparty. Instead, it uses smart contracts to automate functions and could, in theory, function on its own as long as people provide liquidity to it.

Besides token swapping, ShibaSwap also offers staking, liquidity pools and an NFT marketplace known as Shiboshis. Each of these services revolves around Shiba Inu and two other Ethereum tokens, ShibaSwap Bone (BONE) and Doge Killer (LEASH).

BONE is the platform’s governance token. Holders can vote on the numerous proposals on the ShibaSwap platform. The more tokens one holds, the more influence their vote has on the decision at hand. At the time of writing, 1 BONE was worth $1.17 with a circulating supply of over 163 million tokens. The tokens maximum supply is 230 million tokens.

LEASH was meant to be a rebase (elastic token) for Dogecoin. This meant that it would track the price of Doge on a 1:1,000 ratio. Therefore, if Doge is trading at $0.50, LEASH would be valued at $500.

However, the coin has long ditched this mechanism and now depends on scarcity to propel its value. Today, there are only 107,647 LEACH tokens in circulation. Thanks to this limited availability, 1 LEASH was worth $337.32 at the time of writing.

Now that we have an idea about the ShibaSwap tokens, we can delve into the functions and services of the platform. As a hard fork of SushiSwap, which is itself a hard fork of Uniswap, ShibaSwap provides many of the same functions you would find on these two platforms and other decentralized exchanges.

If you visit the ShibaSwap website, you will see six key functions users can perform. There is DIG, NFTs, BURY, SWAP, DOGGY DAO and WOOF. These are nothing but doggy-themed names for standard DEX services such as liquidity pools (dig), staking (bury), yield farming (woof) and the governance page (Doggy DAO). The other two services (NFTs and Swap) are self-explanatory.

Through the staking function, users can stake SHIB, BONE or LEASH to generate high-interest yields paid in BONE tokens. With DIG, users can deposit crypto pairs into existing liquidity pools or create new ones. Either way, they will be rewarded with ShibaSwap liquidity pool tokens (SSLP). These SSLP tokens can be redeemed for BONE through ShibaSwap’s WOOF (yield farming) function.

On ShibaSwap’s NFT platform, users can buy, sell and trade Shiboshis, a 10,000-strong NFT collection of pixelated Shiba Inu cartoons. Each cartoon has different traits and rarity. And finally, with SWAP, users can trade several different cryptocurrencies.

Another feature on ShibaSwap is BONEFOLIO, which users can use to track their returns and check current interest rates on the DIG and BURY functions. The platform also has a burn portal where users can voluntarily discard their SHIB, BONE or LEASH.

ShibaSwap has been a success so far, with thousands of users on board, a daily trading volume of nearly $3 million and almost $20 million locked on the platform. These are substantial numbers for a platform that is only 1.5 years old. The platform could see even more traction if and when it's migrated to the Shibarium, Shiba Inu’s (rumoured) upcoming layer-1 blockchain.