SHIB Devs Begin Testing Shibarium to Ethereum Bridge

Shibarium, an upcoming SHIB-based, layer-2 network that's being built on top of the Ethereum blockchain, now has a testnet bridge that allows tokens to be transferred between the two networks. But for now, at least, only dummy assets are being supported.

Pseudonymous "marketing specialist" Lucie, who represents the Shiba Inu ecosystem, tweeted today that the public testing phase will allow enthusiasts to "be among the first to try out this revolutionary cross-chain solution."

Shiba Inu (SHIB), the 15th-biggest crypto asset by market cap, is a meme coin based on the same internet meme as Dogecoin. And the launch of the Shibarium-to-Ethereum testnet bridge appears to giving doge-themed tokens a boost.

SHIB, Dogecoin, and even ShibaSwap (BONE) have seen big gains.

Data from CoinGecko shows BONE has rallied by 9% over the past 24 hours. Meanwhile, SHIB, with a market cap of nearly $5 billion, has surged by nearly 6% over the same timeframe—making it the fifth-best performer among the 100 biggest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.

Despite the enthusiasm, bridges have become a common attack vector for cybercriminals. Perhaps the worst example relates to the $622 million hack of the Ronin Network in 2022, an Ethereum sidechain used by play-to-earn game Axie Infinity. North Korean hackers were linked to that exploit, along with several others.

Nonetheless, this could help the Shiba Inu ecosystem unlock far greater utility—and help the project move away from being castigated as a "meme coin" where price rises are driven by speculation and greed rather than anything tangible.

But even if Shibarium takes off, affiliated tokens are unlikely to match the heady days of the last bull market. Both BONE and SHIB remain 90% below all-time highs set in 2021, per CoinGecko.

There's been renewed interest in dog-themed tokens of late, with Dogecoin also performing fairly well at certain points this week.

That likely has something to do with the never-ending speculation that Elon Musk may make the altcoin an official payment method on X, formerly known as Twitter. The billionaire began pumping the coin on the social network back in 2020, and had an instrumental role in the 14,700% surge that Dogecoin enjoyed in the first four months of 2021.

After unsuccessful campaigns to drive DOGE to one dollar and SHIB to one cent, potential use as widespread payment methods could herald the start of a new chapter—and mean there's life in the old dogs yet.