Despite its early successes, including the evolution into an ecosystem with multiple projects and tokens, Shiba Inu now faces significant challenges.
Once projected to break into the top five cryptocurrencies, Shiba Inu is now showing vulnerabilities for its more than 1.5 million investors holding SHIB.
Stagnant Shiba Inu Price and Declining Ecosystem Tokens
Notably, Shiba Inu’s ecosystem tokens, including SHIB, BONE, and LEASH, have underperformed in recent times. In particular, SHIB’s price has largely remained stagnant around the $0.00001 level.
Lack of Transparent Leadership
Another major red flag with Shiba Inu lies in the team’s continued preference for anonymous leadership. For years, lead developer Shytoshi Kusama and other team members have chosen to remain faceless, possibly to avoid accountability.
After the Shibarium Bridge attack earlier this month, top developer Kaal Dhairya publicly stated that he is not the project’s leader.
Earlier in January, Kusama also revealed plans to step down as the lead visionary of Shiba Inu. While he suggested holding an election to appoint a new leader, no timeline has been announced for this process.
Meanwhile, history shows that even projects with visible leadership have collapsed overnight. Consider FTX and Terra, which once commanded enormous trust but imploded dramatically, causing widespread user losses.
If projects like Terra and FTX, with known leadership, could fail, then Shiba Inu’s future, with its anonymous team, appears even more uncertain.
Low Community Engagement
The Shiba Inu team has decreased its engagement with the community, with Kusama occasionally going silent for weeks. He recently set his account to private, allowing only approved followers to see posts.
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Shytoshi Kusama X account in private mode
Even Lucie, the marketing lead who was once active on social media, has scaled back her engagement on X.
This lack of communication leaves the project vulnerable to FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt), which malicious actors could exploit to mislead or prey on investors, potentially resulting in financial losses.
No Major Breakthrough After Shibarium Bridge Hack
On September 12, Shiba Inu confirmed that malicious actors had hacked the Shibarium Bridge, stealing assets worth over $4 million. More than two weeks later, the team has yet to recover the stolen funds.
Although the team collaborated with K9 Finance to offer a bounty of 50 ETH to retrieve the stolen funds, the attackers ignored the offer. Instead, they have continued to sell the assets from the loot. Earlier this week, the attackers swapped over 2,000 BAD tokens (obtained through the heist) for 3.2 ETH.
While containment measures remain in place, the Shiba Inu ecosystem team has not provided a timeline for reopening the Shibarium Bridge. With no significant success achieved so far, concerns are mounting over the security of Shibarium, a platform many expected to draw more users into the Shiba Inu ecosystem.
Unfinished Projects and Broken Promises
The Shiba Inu ecosystem is filled with half-finished projects. Some of which include Shib: The Metaverse, NFT marketplace, and privacy-focused Layer-3 blockchain. Each missed milestone erodes investor trust, prompting many SHIB holders to wonder if the project’s roadmap is more hype than substance.
Final Thoughts
For Shiba Inu’s 1.5 million holders, the risks are mounting. Without strong leadership, transparent governance, and consistent delivery on promises, the project risks becoming a cautionary tale instead of a success story.
Unless the team addresses these issues directly, Shiba Inu could follow in the footsteps of other failed projects that once dominated headlines.
