The Shiba Inu (SHIB) marketing lead, Lucie, has provided insights into the challenges that lie ahead for the meme coin. She also highlighted how the SHIB ecosystem has evolved since launching four years ago.

Challenges That Lie Ahead For Shiba Inu

Lucie mentioned in an X (formerly Twitter) post that “building a decentralized network state is tough” while outlining the challenge that lies ahead for the Shiba Inu ecosystem. Last year, the Shiba Inu team revealed their plans to make SHIB a “decentralized digital nation-state.” However, Lucie’s revelation suggests that it hasn’t been easy, although the team has no plans to back down.

The ShibPaper contains the plan to make Shiba Inu a decentralized network state, which the team began implementing last year. Part of the plan included launching the layer-2 network Shibarium, with the goal of making the network a major player in the decentralized finance (DeFi) world.

As Lucie mentioned, that hasn’t been easy, considering that network activity on Shibarium has nosedived since the start of the year. This has presented a setback for the Shiba Inu team, especially seeing how the layer-2 network thrived in the latter parts of 2023 when it recorded millions in daily transactions.

However, the Shiba Inu team has undoubtedly shown that it can withstand adversity, with how they handled Shibarium’s botched launch and quickly got the network up and running again. As such, the SHIBcommunity will feel confident that the team can weather any future challenge and take SHIB to unprecedented heights.

The team has already made great strides this year, raising $12 million to develop its privacy-focused layer-3 network. This network is also integral to the team’s plans to make Shiba Inu a decentralized network state. The layer-3 network is also well-placed to become a game-changer as it addresses privacy concerns when using blockchain technology.

The network integrates the Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) solution, enabling encrypted data processing.

How SHIB Has Evolved

Lucie noted how Shiba Inu has transformed from a meme coin to a “legitimate decentralized platform” and one of the “biggest Web3 communities.” She highlighted how the crypto token currently has a market cap of billions of dollars, making it the second-largest meme coin and the thirteenth-largest crypto by market cap.

Lucie also mentioned Shiba Inu’s “exponential growth” in the last bull market when it enjoyed an unprecedented price gain of 150 million percent. Meanwhile, the applications and tools built in the SHIB ecosystem have undoubtedly contributed to the meme coin’s growth, which Lucie highlighted. This includes Shibaswap, Shiba Inu’s native decentralized exchange (DEX), and the other payment partnerships that present real-life use cases for the meme coin.

At the time of writing, Shiba Inu is trading at around $0.00001192, down over 15% in the last 24 hours, according to data from CoinMarketCap.