Shiba Inu: Shibarium holds 99 percent less capital than at its December 2024 peak

Shiba Inu stands at $0.00000479 on Friday evening, about 2.1 percent above Thursday's level but down 5.8 percent over seven days (CoinGecko, as of October 30, 11:42 pm). By market capitalisation the token ranks 36th, at $2.82 billion. Another number is also established, one that has nothing to do with the price chart: according to DefiLlama data, Shibarium, the project's own blockchain, held just $41,104 in locked capital on October 30. On December 8, 2024, it was $6,437,163.

Our assessment follows further down: the token has a functioning market, the blockchain beneath it no longer does, and for you this mainly determines how you store Shiba Inu and where you sell it. Anyone who holds Shiba Inu only on a centralised exchange or in their own wallet on Ethereum is not affected. Anyone who has moved tokens across the bridge to Shibarium would do well to check today how much liquidity is actually left on the other side.

Shibarium holds $41,104, two years ago it was $6.44 million

Shibarium is Shiba Inu's sidechain, launched in 2023. The blockchain bundles transactions and settles them against Ethereum to make transfers cheaper than on the main network. Fees there are paid in BONE, the project's second token.

The metric used to gauge activity on such a blockchain is called total value locked, or TVL. It adds up how much capital is deposited in the contracts on that blockchain, meaning trading pools, lending markets and staking contracts. DefiLlama lists $41,104 for Shibarium on October 30. The highest value ever measured was $6,437,163 on December 8, 2024. That is 99.4 percent less.

The past few days also show how small the amounts that move the figure have become. On October 23 it stood at $40,590, on October 24 at $135,775, on October 27 at $128,582 and on October 28 back at $43,235. A single provider that puts in $90,000 and withdraws it four days later triples this blockchain and then cuts it to a third. On Polygon, which held $687,026,468 the same day, the same amount would be lost in the noise.

What locked capital on a blockchain means

Locked capital is not the value of all tokens that exist on a blockchain. It is the portion that someone has voluntarily deposited in a contract and that is available there as liquidity for others. It is precisely this liquidity that determines whether you can close a position without moving the price yourself.

An example makes the scale tangible. Shiba Inu's market capitalisation is $2,823,285,613. Divided by the $41,104 on Shibarium, that gives a factor of 68,686. So the project's own blockchain accounts for roughly one seventy-thousandth of the token's value. Trading happens elsewhere: Shiba Inu's 24-hour volume on October 30 was $108,397,385, or 2,637 times what is locked on Shibarium.

ShibaSwap holds $16,936, the blockchain's largest source

DefiLlama lists 21 protocols linked to Shibarium. On October 30, the trading venues on the blockchain itself break down as follows: ShibaSwap V1 holds $16,936, WoofSwap $8,052, Shibex $5,061, DogSwap $4,558, PunkSwap $2,819, ChewySwap $1,611 and ShibaSwap V2 just $1,085. Together that makes up the blockchain's $41,104.

For you this is not an abstract statistic but a ceiling. If a blockchain's largest trading venue holds $16,936 in liquidity, a $5,000 sell order there is already a third of the pool. The price you end up getting then has little to do with the price on the big exchanges. This deviation is called slippage, and it does not grow linearly but steeply as the order approaches the size of the pool.

If you store larger holdings yourself, the answer lies not in the blockchain but in the custody route. Our hardware wallet comparison shows which devices are available in Germany and what they cost.

1,200 transactions in a day and 0.05 percent network utilisation

The second indicator is activity itself. The block explorer Shibariumscan shows 1,200 transactions for October 30 as of 11:48 pm. The day's gas consumption is 142,805,190 units, equivalent to about 6,800 simple transfers. The explorer puts network utilisation at 0.0503 percent. The gas price stands at 1.77 gwei for fast and slow transfers alike, because there is no competition for block space.

The comparison with its own history is starker than any comparison with other blockchains. Shibariumscan counts a total of 940,389,837 transactions in 12,155,615 blocks, an average of 77 transactions per block. With an average block time of 8.25 seconds, around 10,470 blocks are produced a day. The 1,200 transactions on this day therefore come to 0.11 transactions per block. 268,019,314 addresses are registered on the blockchain.

The fee burn depends on traffic, and the traffic is missing

This is where things come back to the token itself. Part of the fees charged on Shibarium is collected and used to take SHIB out of circulation. This destruction is called a burn, and it is the project's only instrument that reduces the circulating supply of 589.24 trillion tokens at all. So the burn is not a stand-alone mechanism but a function of traffic on the blockchain.

We measured how thin the supply to this mechanism has become at another point on October 25: at the time the burn cycle hinged on 371 BONE, as described in our article on the burn and the 371 BONE. Since then the picture has not brightened; it has shifted. The constraint is no longer the level of fees but the number of transactions on which a fee can be charged. With 1,200 transactions a day at 1.77 gwei per unit, there is mathematically hardly anything left to burn.

BONE itself trades at $0.051316 on October 30 with a market capitalisation of $12.97 million. The project's third token, LEASH, comes to $1.36 million and traded $886.52 in 24 hours. That sum is equivalent to a single retail investor with a mid-sized order.

Ronin holds 240 times as much, Polygon 16,700 times

So that the $41,104 does not hang in the air, here is the same measurement for other blockchains, all read from DefiLlama on October 30. Ronin, the gaming blockchain behind Axie Infinity and also a niche project, holds $9,846,272, or 240 times as much. Cronos stands at $127,695,304 and Polygon at $687,026,468, or 16,714 times as much. Arbitrum holds $1.42 billion, Base $5.81 billion and Ethereum $43.78 billion.

The comparison within its own camp is even more telling. Pepe has a market capitalisation of $2.09 billion on October 30, below Shiba Inu, but traded $1.66 billion in 24 hours. That is 15 times Shiba Inu's volume. Floki comes to a market capitalisation of $231 million. None of these projects runs its own blockchain, and none suffers for it.

Our assessment: the token has a market, the blockchain does not

From the editorial team's point of view, Shiba Inu breaks down into two things that need to be assessed separately. The data supports this: with $108.4 million in daily turnover, the token is liquid, ranks 36th and can be sold on any major exchange in seconds. The blockchain, by contrast, holds $41,104, processes 1,200 transactions a day and runs at 0.05 percent utilisation. The promise that a dedicated network creates utility for the token cannot be borne out by these numbers.

Against this is the fact that TVL is a volatile metric and, on small blockchains, depends on individual providers. The range between $40,590 and $135,775 from October 23 to 28 shows this. A rebuild is technically possible at any time, and according to its project website the project continues to work on the blockchain. What follows from this is not a statement about the price but one about risk at a specific point: the blockchain is currently not a place to park capital, not even in return for an advertised yield. If you are looking for income on your holdings, the more robust routes are with regulated providers that disclose how they hold assets.

The bridge back needs liquidity on the Shibarium side

A bridge is a pair of contracts that locks tokens on one blockchain and issues an equivalent on the other. On the way back, the process runs in reverse. This operation itself does not depend on the trading venues' locked capital but on the bridge contracts.

Two things still depend on it, though. First, you need BONE to send a transaction on Shibarium at all, because the fee is paid in that token. If you have bridged only SHIB and hold no BONE, you cannot get back without a second step. Second, locked capital matters immediately if you want not just to move tokens on Shibarium but to swap them. Then you depend on the pools, and the largest holds $16,936.

In practice, this means: keep a small amount of BONE for fees before you bridge anything, and plan the return trip via the bridge, not via a swap on the blockchain. If you want to move larger amounts, split them and watch how far the amount you receive deviates from the price on the big exchanges.

MiCA does not cover the trading venues on Shibarium

Since December 30, 2024, the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, MiCA for short, has applied in the European Union. It requires providers that hold or exchange crypto assets for customers to be authorised and subjects them to rules on capital, custody and complaints procedures.

Trading venues that run as contracts on a blockchain and have no operator with a customer relationship do not fall under it as things stand. In practice, this means that if you suffer a loss on one of these venues, there is no supervisor you can turn to and no deposit protection. That is not a criticism of the project but the legal position. This point belongs in the decision about how much of a holding should be on such a blockchain at all.

Holding period and exemption limit: why the timing must be documented

In Germany, crypto assets count as other assets under Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act. If you sell at a profit within a year of buying, that gain is taxable above the exemption limit of €1,000 a year. After a holding period of one year, the gain is tax-free.

Whether a move to another blockchain restarts the holding period has not been settled conclusively. The tax authorities have not commented explicitly on bridging tokens, and tax advisers assess the case differently, depending on whether they classify the process as an exchange into a different asset or as a mere relocation of the same asset. The only established point is that in a dispute you have to prove when you acquired which holding. So document the time, amount and transaction ID of every bridge transaction and have a tax adviser clarify the classification.

The current month of October is relevant to this calculation, by the way: Shiba Inu is down 16.5 percent over 30 days and 94.4 percent below its all-time high of $0.00008616 from October 27, 2021. Realised losses from private disposals can be offset against gains of the same kind, including across years. If you want to realise losses, you need a sale within the one-year period, not after it.

Shibarium liquidity: $16,936 sets the exit size

1. Locate your holdings. Check in your wallet which blockchain your SHIB are on. If it says Ethereum, the situation on Shibarium does not affect you. If it says Shibarium, keep BONE for fees and plan the return trip via the bridge, not via a swap. Our staking comparison shows which providers pay income on holdings and how they hold assets.
2. Set your exit size against the pool size. With $16,936 in the largest pool, an amount above $5,000 is no longer a normal order. Sell larger holdings via a centralised exchange. Which ones are available on a regulated basis in Germany and what fees they charge is in our exchange comparison.
3. Record the timing. Note the purchase date, amount and every move between blockchains. Without these records, the one-year period under Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act cannot be demonstrated to the tax office, and a loss carry-forward lacks a basis. We keep the latest on the deadline and planned changes on our holding period page.

You can check the activity figures yourself at any time: the explorer Shibariumscan shows transactions, gas consumption and network utilisation on a daily basis.

(As of October 30, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)