The team behind the popular meme coin Shiba Inu (SHIB) has taken a significant step towards expanding its ecosystem by raising $12 million through the sale of its unreleased TREAT token. This funding round, which attracted non-U.S. venture capital investors such as Polygon Ventures, Mechanism Capital, Big Brain Holdings, Shima Capital, Animoca Brands, Morningstar Ventures, Woodstock Fund, DWF Ventures, Stake Capital, and Comma 3 Ventures, is aimed at developing a new privacy-focused Layer 3 blockchain.
According to Shiba Inu’s lead developer, known as Shytoshi Kusama, the token round comprises both pre-seed and seed rounds, though he declined to comment on the valuation. However, a source with direct knowledge of the matter revealed that it was a tranched round, with each tranche occurring at valuations of $75 million, $100 million, and $200 million, respectively.
The TREAT token, which will serve as the utility and governance token of the new Layer 3 blockchain, is being built on top of Shibarium, Shiba Inu’s Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain. Kusama emphasized that TREAT will be the final non-stable token from the Shiba Inu ecosystem, with a new token called Shi scheduled for introduction later this year.
Shiba Inu’s new Layer 3 blockchain is being developed using fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) technology from cryptography company Zama, which recently raised $73 million in funding. FHE is regarded as the “holy grail” of cryptography, enabling end-to-end data encryption, even during processing. According to Shiba Inu, “This new encryption chain aims to address multiple issues in crypto, including privacy and trust for Shiba Inu’s extensive community of tens of millions and the next billion crypto-curious individuals.”
Kusama emphasized the importance of maintaining a project that complies with international law while protecting data privacy and individual security. “By allowing people to both be private yet still gain credentials to verify their identity, our entire system extends security and compliance at the same time,” he stated.
The new blockchain is slated to release a testnet in the third quarter of this year, followed by a mainnet launch after thorough testing. Kusama declined to disclose the name of the Layer 3 blockchain to prevent potential scammers from capitalizing on the project’s name.
