Shiba Inu's Testnet 'Puppynet' Sees Rising Activity Ahead of Shibarium Mainnet

Shibarium network’s native test network, Puppynet, is seeing rising activity ahead of a release on the main network planned for later this year.

Blockchain explorer data shows the Puppynet testnet has processed more than 700,000 transactions from almost 200,000 unique wallets after its launch on March 11. Much of that activity came in the past week, with more than 114,000 transactions over a 24-hour period on March 28-29.

While Puppynet's activity has been brisk so far, upcoming features may boost the value of SHIB and BONE, two Shibarium ecosystem tokens. There's still reason for caution, however.

"Some might argue that the Shibarium upgrade’s financial impact has been underwhelming. But in our view, its beta test network Puppynet, reached an important milestone of 200,000 wallets in just over a week, and while continued work must be done, it’s still considered remarkable," Rachel Lin, CEO of SynFutures, a decentralized derivatives trading platform, said in a Telegram message.

"Moreover, Unification, the firm behind Shibarium, announced that it is working on an all-in-one wallet solution that will enable native two-way asset transfers, staking/delegating, as well as include a ShibaSwap integration module. These developments suggest that the value of SHIB and BONE, the native token of the Shibarium network, could witness a near-term price spike, but given the current macroeconomic climate, any such movements will likely to be short-lived," Lin cautioned.

Testnets, such as Puppynet, are blockchain networks designed for testing purposes. They mimic activity on the mainnet and allow developers to debug any issues and monitor network activity ahead of a wider release.

Shibarium is touted as a major development for the Shiba Inu ecosystem, which originally launched as a meme coin fashioned after the popular Shiba Inu dog breed but has since been a serious blockchain project.

Shibarium is a layer 2 blockchain, which refers to a set of off-chain systems (separate blockchains) built on top of layer 1 protocols that reduce bottlenecks with scaling and data.

These networks bundle multiple off-chain transactions into a single layer 1 transaction, which helps reduce the data load and fees on a main network.

As CoinDesk previously reported, Shiba Inu developers said Shibarium would focus on metaverse and gaming applications especially as the non-fungible-token sector is expected to heat up in the coming years, apart from Shibarium’s use as a cheap settlement for decentralized applications, or dapps, built on the network.