Shiba Inu, the canine memecoin project, has successfully raised $12 million through a private token sale. The funds were obtained by selling its upcoming TREAT utility and governance token.
Notable investors who participated in the token sale include Comma 3 Ventures, Big Brain Holdings, Cypher Capital, Shima Capital, Hercules Ventures, Animoca Brands, Morningstar Ventures, Woodstock Fund, DWF Ventures, Polygon Ventures, Stake Capital, Illuminati Digital Capital, Primal Capital, Mechanism Capital, DWF Ventures, and Spirit Dao. It’s important to note that all investors involved in the private token sale were located outside of the United States.
Shytoshi Kusama, the anonymous core developer of Shiba Inu, expressed his excitement about the participation of venture capital firms and their partners. He believes that their involvement will help the project expand its network and unlock its full potential for the community.
Kusama, who has maintained a low profile recently, was spotted by users in various locations such as New York, Japan, and the Maldives. However, he claims to be on vacation and enjoying his time like everyone else. Despite this, Kusama resurfaced on Telegram on April 21 and responded to a user’s criticism by defending his dedication to the project.
The Shiba Inu team explained that TREAT is the final token that will be released by the meme brand. It will be used to unlock the newly announced blockchain, which features Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE). Shiba Inu partnered with Zama.ai earlier this year to implement FHE technology, which is the foundation of the protocol’s innovative privacy layer known as TREAT.
The funds raised will be utilized by Shiba Inu’s Panamian entity, Shiba Inu Mint S.A., to develop the TREAT platform. The team highlighted that the technology has potential applications in encrypted lending platforms, tokenized asset exchanges, and encrypted machine learning models.
Shiba Inu has proven to be a highly successful memecoin, delivering a remarkable 164% gain over the past year. In December, the protocol introduced .shib domains for its tokenholders. Additionally, Shibarium, the project’s layer-2 scaling solution, has amassed over 1 million users since its launch.
In response to recent claims about bridge issues, Shibarium has denied the allegations and dismissed them as FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt).