On Thursday, the Shiba Inu marketing lead Lucie (@LucieSHIB) announced the official launch date for liquid staking on the Shibarium network. The announcement was made through a video posted on X on August 15, marking a pivotal moment for the project.

Lucie celebrated the progress of the development team, stating, “Let’s give a huge shout out to the incredible K9 Finance team! Liquid staking is on its way to SHIBARIUM! The KNINE testnet is live for everyone! Mark your calendars: Liquid Staking launches on Shibarium this September 18!”

Let’s give a huge shoutout to the incredible @K9finance team! 🚀

Liquid staking is on its way to SHIBARIUM!

The $KNINE testnet is live for everyone !

🗓️ Mark your calendars: Liquid Staking launches on @ShibariumNet this September 18! pic.twitter.com/nJuSEhxaRO

— 𝐋𝐔𝐂𝐈𝐄 (@LucieSHIB) August 15, 2024

What The Shiba Inu Community Can Expect

Shibarium, a layer-2 blockchain solution built to enhance scalability and reduce transaction costs for Shiba Inu and associated tokens, is now entering a crucial phase with the integration of liquid staking. This feature is facilitated through K9 Finance, the designated Liquid Staking Derivatives (LSD) platform for the ecosystem.

Users can stake their BONE tokens through K9 Finance and receive knBONE, a liquid staking derivative token. This token acts like a tradable receipt representing the user’s stake, which can be freely traded or used as collateral in various DeFi applications. This model maintains liquidity of assets, allowing users to engage in other financial activities without locking up their resources, thereby enhancing the flexibility and potential for additional earnings through DeFi platforms.

The initial testing phase for the BONE Crusher feature began in the last week of July, targeting large-scale token holders—known colloquially as ‘whales’—who possessed at least 400 million KNINE DAO tokens. This phase allowed these large stakeholders to participate actively in the staking process, enabling them to stake BONE, earn knBONE, and participate in earning additional rewards including partner tokens and retroactive KNINE rewards

Following the success of this phase, K9 Finance is now opening the testnet to the broader public, eliminating previous restrictions and allowing a more extensive user base to engage with the test features.

With the mainnet launch on September 18, the project enters the second of three phases. The second stage, ‘Boro’, was scheduled for a mainnet launch in Q3 20204 and will thus arrive perfectly in time. Boro draws its name from the extinct Borophaginae, a nod to the “BONE crushing dogs” that inspire this stage. It signifies the full-scale operational deployment of the core liquid-staking product of K9 Finance on the Shibarium network.

The final phase, ‘Caninae’, scheduled for Q4 2024, will see the launch of a V2. This stage will include “all living dog species, including the Shiba Inu! It is the modern-day Canine and is symbolic of building K9 to become the modern expectation of a fully decentralized liquid-staking derivative product. It is the finalization of K9,” as per announcement in March this year.

Notably, K9 Finance DAO launched its native governance token, KNINE, on March 7. This ERC20 token was initially available exclusively on Uniswap.

At press time, SHIB traded at $0.00001370.