Shiba Inu secured $12 million in a funding round through a private token sale of its upcoming TREAT token to bolster the development of an unnamed privacy-focused Layer-3 (L3) blockchain network.
According to an April 22 post on X (formerly Twitter) by Lucie, the marketing lead at Shib.io, investors that participated in the funding round included Polygon Ventures, Mechanism Capital, Big Brain VC, Shima Capital, Animoca Brands, and DWF Ventures.
Lucie said:
“The layer-3 will introduce enhanced privacy features that are not available on the layer-2 network. This can provide users with more privacy options and security measures when interacting with the ecosystem.”
This move reflects Shiba Inu’s continued strategic shift towards becoming a versatile utility blockchain network. Notably, the memecoin began this pivot last year with the successful rollout of Shibarium, the ecosystem’s Ethereum Layer-2 (L2) scaling solution.
Layer-3 network
Developers plan to leverage Zama’s cutting-edge, fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) technology and build the L3 network on top of Shibarium
Shiba Inu described the FHE technology as akin to a “magic box” because it enables direct operations on encrypted data without decryption. The technology ensures sensitive information remains concealed during computations.
Developers plan to release a preliminary version of the L3 network in the third quarter of this year. The network will prioritize regulatory compliance alongside robust security and privacy measures.
TREAT will serve as the utility and governance token for the new privacy-centric L3 blockchain.
Shibarium sees outage
Meanwhile, Shiba Inu’s Ethereum layer-2 network Shibarium experienced a brief outage today due to networking issues among the validators.
Shiba Inu developer Kaal Dhairya said:
“[The] network is back up and running now [but] some services like shibariumscan or external RPCs can still remain down until the steps provided are implemented.”
Since its launch, Shibarium has seen significant adoption, pushing its total transaction volumes to around 418 million, according to Shibariumscan data.