The Shiba Inu community is waiting for the launch of a second-level scaling solution and is optimistic about the new year 2023, although the SHIB rate has sunk by 75+ this year%

The community of the Shiba Inu project is optimistic about the coming year 2023, expecting the launch of the second-level scaling solution (layer 2) Shibarium and the potential integration of new payment solutions.

Meanwhile, in the outgoing year 2022, the SHIB token exchange rate suffered heavy losses in the conditions of a protracted crypto winter. It has collapsed by 90+% from the historical maximum recorded in October 2021. Will the project be able to meet the high expectations of the community for 2023 and give momentum to the coin?

Source: TradingView
Shiba Inu Community (SHIB) back in December last year, it was actively discussed that the project developers are busy creating a solution for scaling the second-level network (layer 2) and want to announce its launch as soon as possible.

The solution, dubbed "Shibarium", will potentially help the project significantly reduce the cost of transactions and ensure their high speed. Reducing the cost of commissions can give a tangible boost to the popularity of the SHIB coin.

However, a year ago, one of the developers did not name any release dates, commenting that "the timeline is not needed if you trust the project. That's how Shib has always worked." In addition, he added, "setting clear deadlines is not a guarantee of success."

At the beginning of this year, the developers announced that the development of the Shibarium private test network has moved to the second stage.

Now Shytoshi Kusama, the anonymous chief developer of Shiba Inu, announced on Twitter that Shibarium could be launched "very soon", but not during the holidays, when people need to spend time with family and loved ones.

"Enjoy the coming days, and the new year will be important for humanity," he concluded vaguely.

This gave SHIB enthusiasts a reason to assume that the long-awaited launch of Shibarium will take place in 2023.

However, some have already declared Shitoshi a "classic procrastinator", noting that his every promise "very soon" is delayed for a long time. On the same occasion, skeptics recalled a certain (unconfirmed) screenshot from Discord from January 2022, when Shitoshi promised to reveal his true identity by the end of this year. So far, this has not happened.

Meanwhile, speculation that payments based on the Shiba Inu meme coin are gaining popularity remains another reason for enthusiasm. GameStop and Nordstorm accept payment in SHIB, and Twitch also supports this coin. In addition, the popular payment service NOWPayments inspired users with the message that SHIB can be used to pay for subscriptions on streaming services Netflix and Spotify.

However, so far all these expectations are not reflected in the dynamics of the SHIB rate. In addition, as the editors of BeInCrypto recently told, currently almost 70% of the total circulating volume of the token supply is controlled by whales. Such a distribution of coins is potentially fraught with problems, given the ability of whales to bring down asset prices with aggressive sales.