Anika Begay
On Thursday, Shiba Inu marketing manager Lucie (@LucieSHIB) announced the official launch date for liquid staking on the Shibarium network. The announcement was made via a video posted to X on August 15, marking a pivotal moment for the project.
Lucie celebrated the development team’s progress, saying, “Let’s give a big round of applause to the incredible team at K9 Finance! Liquid staking is coming to SHIBARIUM! The KNINE testnet is live for everyone! Mark your calendars: Liquid Staking is launching on Shibarium on September 18th!”
Let’s give a big round of applause to the incredible @K9finance team! 🚀
Liquid staking is coming to SHIBARIUM!
THE $KNINE testnet is live for everyone!
🗓️ Mark your calendars: Liquid Staking launches on @ShibariumNet this September 18th! pic.twitter.com/nJuSEhxaRO
— Lucie (@LucieSHIB) August 15, 2024
What the Shiba Inu Community Can Expect
Shibarium, a layer-2 blockchain solution designed to improve scalability and reduce transaction costs for Shiba Inu and associated tokens, is now entering a pivotal phase with the integration of liquid staking. This functionality is facilitated through K9 Finance, the designated Liquid Staking Derivatives (LSD) platform for the ecosystem.
Users can stake their BONE tokens via K9 Finance and receive knBONE, a liquid staking derivative token. This token acts as a tradable receipt representing the user’s stake, which can be freely traded or used as collateral in various DeFi applications. This model maintains the liquidity of the assets, allowing users to engage in other financial activities without tying up their assets, thus improving flexibility and the potential for additional earnings via DeFi platforms.
The initial testing phase for the BONE Crusher feature began in the last week of July, targeting large-scale token holders, colloquially known as “whales,” who held at least 400 million KNINE DAO tokens. This phase allowed these large stakeholders to actively participate in the staking process, allowing 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 a wider audience, removing previous restrictions and allowing a wider user base to interact with the testing features.
With the mainnet launch on September 18, the project enters the second of three phases. Phase two, “Boro,” was scheduled for a Q3 2020 mainnet launch4 and will therefore arrive right on time. Boro is named after the extinct Borophaginae, a nod to the “BONE-CRUSHING DOGS” that inspire this phase. It signifies the full-scale operational deployment of K9 Finance’s core liquid-staking product on the Shibarium network.
The final phase, ‘Caninae’, scheduled for Q4 2024, will see the launch of a V2. This phase will include “all living dog species, including the Shiba Inu! This is the modern-day Canine and is symbolic of K9’s build to become the modern expectation of a fully decentralized liquid staking derivative product. This is the finalization of K9,” as announced in March of this year.
Notably, on March 7, K9 Finance DAO launched its native governance token, KNINE. Initially, this ERC20 token was available exclusively on Uniswap.
At press time, SHIB was trading at $0.00001370.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
