Lucie, the marketing lead for Shiba Inu, recently took to the social media platform X to demystify the token-burning process on Shibarium, Shiba Inu’s layer-2 blockchain network. She provided a detailed explanation, focusing on the complexities involved in the bridging process between Ethereum, the original layer-1 blockchain, and Shibarium.
According to Lucie, when users bridge their SHIB tokens to Shibarium, the original tokens get locked in a bridge contract on Ethereum. Simultaneously, a new version of the token is minted on the Shibarium network. This means that although the original SHIB tokens are effectively removed from active circulation, they are not destroyed. Instead, a corresponding version of the token comes into existence on Shibarium.
Lucie also offered guidelines for those involved in the Shibarium project who wish to burn SHIB tokens. She advised them to first bridge these tokens back to the Ethereum network before sending them to a “dead wallet,” a type of wallet where tokens can no longer be accessed.
Addressing a community query that if Shiba Inu tokens are locked in the bridge contract indefinitely, it mirrors the effects of a “burn,” as the tokens aren’t circulating, Lucie acknowledged that locking tokens in the bridge contract essentially has the same effect as burning them, as they are removed from active circulation. However, she clarified that these tokens are not technically “burned” in the traditional sense because they are not sent to dead wallets.
Discussing the lack of a built-in burning mechanism in Shibarium, Lucie emphasized the community-driven nature of the Shiba Inu project. She pointed out that there are no developer or marketing wallets in Shiba Inu from which tokens could be burned.
This clarification from Lucie comes amid a wider debate within the Shiba Inu community about the real impact of token burns on Shibarium. A community-led burn tracker known as Shibburn had previously argued that burning tokens on Shibarium does not reduce the total supply of SHIB tokens on the Ethereum network.
Prior to this, Lucie had also alerted the community about a bug in the Shibariumscan explorer, which had started displaying transactions in Ethereum (ETH) instead of the Shiba Inu token BONE. She reassured the community that this bug would not affect the functionality of Shibarium’s layer-2 solution.
