Shibaverse: A Shib Community Metaverse
How It Began- It is now almost fifteen months since Shibaverse launched. A lot has happened since then, and it feels appropriate, with the recent release of the Roadmap 2.0, to take a moment to reflect, to see how far we have come, and to reinforce the reasons and ethos behind launching this project in the first place. https://shibaverse.io/roadmap/
Launch- Shibaverse launched in August 2021 as a community-driven metaverse inspired by Shiba and based on Ryoshi’s vision that we, as a community, have an essential role in the development of the ecosystem. Dedicated to the assertion that blockchain belongs to everyone, the focus of Shibaverse would be to build an educational and entertainment-styled metaverse available to anyone on any device. It aspires toward lowering the barriers of entry, especially to the underprivileged and those disenfranchised by the current economic system. While Ryoshi gave many specifics in the core framework of the vision, there are some specific elements of the vision we took to heart :
“With Shiba, we have from the beginning made it clear that no-one is in charge. There is no man accountable, no person responsible and no entity has the keys to the kingdom.”
“The end result is that you are responsible.”
“I always send questions back to them. Ok when are you going to do this thing that you just asked me?”
Ryoshi’s Vision- Ryoshi’s Mediums, while laying out a structure for the core elements of the Shiba ecosystem, also presented certain intangibles and an invitation to participate and take ownership and responsibility for the process. If we consider Ryoshi a visionary, and Ryoshi considered the community co-visionaries, then it is incumbent upon us to contribute and participate.
Ryoshi’s vision was to see Shiba everywhere. And to see it “flourish a thousand blossoms.” IRL businesses, communities, and individuals worldwide, raising the flag of Shiba so that Shiba is everywhere you look. We wanted to support this vision by building a decentralized autonomous community-driven metaverse platform to support.
Shibaverse Core Ethos- This is the ethos upon which Shibaverse community and devs laid the foundations, as a place for Shiba Army, a visual representation of the ecosystem, and a metaverse that can support the core platforms and tokens of the Shiba ecosystem while building a self-sustaining funding structure to support it.
We Are ShibArmy- Supporting the Shiba ecosystem is a fluid and evolving process incorporating community feedback and participation. WE STAND WITH SHIBA. We support the organic development of the ecosystem and the vision of Ryoshi in helping to bring about a decentralized totality for everyone. We are only just beginning. We need to stand together, link arms, and support this organic movement as we work together in building on and for the Shiba ecosystem. It starts with us.
Shiba Community Projects- Shibaverse is a place for those who have the desire and tenacity to create something unique within the Shiba ecosystem. Currently, we are exploring the possibility of setting up our DAO, where one of the first votes will be to allocate a part of our NFT proceeds through a fund to support Shiba community projects that in turn, give something back to the community and ecosystem. This is how we will grow by supporting each other to create platforms that have value and to continually bring resources back to the community. Stay tuned for more developments.
Relationship with Shiba- Many people have asked us about our relationship with Shiba, and our answer is always the same. We are not Shib devs or admin, but rather we are community members inspired by Ryoshis vision of a “decentralized sovereign entity and totality” for a better world. We have only ever wanted to be a place where we, and others who join us, can put our collective efforts to use in building something beneficial to everyone.
Shibaverse Benefits to Shib Ecosystem- The next question we are asked quite often is to articulate the benefits of Shibaverse to the Shiba ecosystem. This is an important question, as it speaks to the underlying motivation for creating a metaverse in the first place. When we launched, every indication we had was that the Shib team had no plans to launch anything similar, so we took that task on ourselves. Because we believe that the metaverse will be the center stage of online commerce for the future. Having a place for Shiba-inspired IRL businesses seemed hugely important to help toward mass adoption and the role of the Shiba ecosystem in the future.
Shiba Ecosystem Themes- The main utility of Shibaverse is the virtual platform itself. Using Shiba-inspired themes like ShibaSwap District, Shibarium District etc, was not meant to correlate directly with those platforms but to create a space that is friendly and familiar for the Shiba community and demonstrates what the community can accomplish when working together toward a common goal. In that sense, it was not meant to create something “new”, nor is it to “copy”, but rather to build on and with, and to bring even more awareness to the core Shiba ecosystem tokens and platforms
Shib Burns- There was a point that Shytoshi, who we made aware of our intentions from the beginning, suggested we burn Shib and make a contribution this way. We responded by setting up a burn lottery to offer rewards for burning Shib at a time when the official ShibaSwap Burn Portal was down, and we pledged 5% of our proceeds from newly minted NFTs to Shib burns. We kept our promise.
Utility For Shib- In our last bi-weekly announcement, we shared that we would be offering real estate in our new District ShibaSwap to purchase in Shib as well as Verse. In the long run we hope that every IRL business in Shibaverse will do the same, and this will give Shib massive utility. With our community NFT marketplace and other core platforms, we will be able to create even more. Together we can envision and implement multitudes of creative utilities for Shiba token and the other core tokens of the Shiba ecosystem.
Utility For Bone- As the core governance token for the Shiba Ecosystem, we have supported its utility by participating in DoggyDao votes and encouraging our community to participate in Woofable pairs votes requiring Bone. As a result, we were in the top 10 Token projects at the end of that vote.
Utility For Leash- This is for the community to decide and discuss ways to implement. Let’s explore this together!
Shibarium- As with so many others, we are waiting on Shibarium. Documentation and public testnet. Our commitment from the beginning was to make a metaverse that is affordable to anyone on any device, and to lower the barriers to entry for plebs, especially in parts of the world where gas fees are significant. We launched on Polygon as a temporary solution, but we also believe that the future is multichain. So the Shibarium will come, and we have every intention to integrate it and promote it as a core utility and support Bone utility simultaneously.
ShibaSwap- We launched on ShibaSwap and burned our liquidity tokens so that Shibaverse liquidity can never be removed. This was to ensure our token is fully immutable (Can never be removed or changed). It is our way of showing our commitment and belief in Shiba as a collective. We have always encouraged our community to provide liquidity and to use ShibaSwap as our primary DEX trading platform. We have contributed trading volume and Swap fees. Many of our core holders are holders of Shib tokens such as Shib, Leash, and Bone. We encourage our community to accumulate core ecosystem tokens, participate in the Shiba Inu governance process, and use all the core platforms.
As Ryoshi said in his Medium article “I Am Ryoshi:”
“Blockchain belongs to us. As the Shiba army, we are an organic organism, greater than any one man, movement, or even nation-state. As our own movement, it is critical to implement the above ideas (in a proper way) to set the proper financial foundations for the future.”
Ryoshi said there is a place for “everyone” in the Shiba ecosystem. So let us join hands and continue our work as co-owner participants in this amazing decentralized organic organism that is Shiba, and help bring this collective vision into being!
“Shiba ecosystem shall flourish a thousand blossoms — creating global means of finance, community and abundance for all.
Hold tight frens, we are early.”
Love, Ryoshi.