Shibarium developer Unification has confirmed Shiba Inu’s Shibarium Layer-2 Public Beta TestNet will launch in Q3, putting to rest several rumours.
Following the launch of its new mainnet chain, Shiba rumours suggested the SHIB Layer-2 could launch as early as June. However, with the TestNet now confirmed for Q3, this has now been debunked.
Here’s a closer look at the Shibarium Public Beta, set to launch in the next few months.
Shibarium Public Beta Coming In Q3
As confirmed in a blog post by Maziar Sadri, the Product Lead at Unification, the Shibarium Public Beta TestNet will launch in Q3, at the same time as the next FUND TestNet upgrade.
“The Public Beta TestNet will allow parties to fully interact with the network, including the validation process,” Sadri said.
Sadri also revealed that the Shibarium private alpha TestNet has been live for “a number of weeks” allowing their developers to create the relevant tools ahead of the public beta. This lines up with comments from Shiba developers in early June, who said the public test was "coming soon".
“The primary tool under heavy development is the wallet application,” Sadri said. This wallet will allow two-way asset transfers between Ethereum and Shibarium, alongside staking and delegating, before ShibaSwap integration.
With a Q3 launch, we can expect this Shibarium TestNet to launch at some point between July and September 2022. This puts its launch period around the same time as the expected Shiba Inu Game launch, too.
Of course, this is only the public TestNet. We still don’t know when the full rollout of Shibarium will come.
This announcement comes as hype for Shibarium among Shiba holders reaches fever pitch. Shiba Inu is preparing for the Shibarium launch, creating a Doggy DAO vote around reserving BONE for Shibarium validator rewards.
Aside from this launch, we’re also still waiting for more information on the expected Shibarium hackathon, which should let holders build on the L2.