The unreleased TREAT token of the famous meme-inspired cryptocurrency, whose team is Shiba Inu, has raised $12 million by selling it to a consortium of global venture capital investors. The list of investors in this funding round includes such names as Polygon Ventures, Mechanism Capital, Big Brain Holdings, Shima Capital, Animoca Brands, Morningstar Ventures, Woodstock Fund, DWF Ventures, Stake Capital and Comma 3 Ventures, as stated by Shiba Inu on Monday.
Some mentioned investors, like Mechanism Capital and Shima Capital, seem to have US bases. At the same time, according to Shytoshi Kusama, who is the lead developer at shiba-inu-coin.com, none of them are US-based in this round. Nonetheless, I cannot disclose full entity names, said Kusama.
Kusama also revealed that fundraising for this particular round started two months ago and ended early this month. He, however, declined to provide detailed information about the valuation. Still, an individual with direct knowledge told The Block it was a tranched round with valuations at different rounds being $75 million, $100 million and $200 million, respectively. Also, he mentioned that the token round includes both pre-seed and seed.
Shiba Inu refers to the TREAT token as their utility and governance token for their new privacy-oriented Layer 3 blockchain, which they are constructing on top of Shibarium and, so far, their Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain. According to Kusama, “This will be our final non-stable coin for our ecosystem”, adding, “We will be launching Shi soon”. The already existing tokens in the ecosystem include SHIB memecoin that is quite popularly known as BONE (governance token for Shibarium) together with LEASH (a fixed-supply coin held by loyal users of Shiba Inu providing them with benefits including those from BONE rewards).
CoinGecko or CoinMarketCap already show some trading volume for a few TREAT tokens, but according to Kusama, these figures are “scams.” Thus, The Shiba Inu Mint S.A., a Panama corporation, will mint the genuine TREAT.
Shiba Inu is developing its new Layer 3 blockchain using fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) technology from cryptography company Zama, which secured $73 million in its recent funding. FHE is often called the “holy grail” of cryptography as it secures data throughout processing so that it remains encrypted end-to-end. This new encryption chain targets crypto issues, including privacy and trust, for more than ten million Shiba Inu communities plus another billion crypto-curious individuals, says Shiba Inu.
Kusama emphasized the necessity of creating a project that is compliant with international law while keeping data privacy and individual security in mind. “Our whole system increases safety and compliance simultaneously by allowing people to be private yet still gain credentials to verify their identity,” he said.
“To ensure there is no such scamming going on like what happened with the fake TREAT tokens”, Kusama refused to disclose the name of the Layer 3 blockchain. According to Kusama, this new blockchain is slated for test-net release in Q3 2022, followed by mainnet “after thorough testing.”