Will the new Shibarium update boost Shiba Inu price?

Shiba Inu price has plunged by over 65% this year and is hovering near its all-time low as demand for one of the most common meme coins wanes.

Shiba Inu (SHIB) dropped to a low of $0.0000080, its lowest level since November 2023. It remains 90% below its all-time high.

Shibarium upgrade in 2026

One of the main reasons why the SHIB price has lost momentum is that Shibarium, its layer-2 network, has not performed as initially expected. It has struggled to attract developers and users, and its metrics have continued to decline.

The situation worsened in September when ShibaSwap, the largest part of its ecosystem, was hacked, prompting the developers to suspend network activity. 

While Shibarium is active today, the network has just $1.8 million in total value locked. In contrast, Monad, which launched its mainnet this week, has already attracted over $200 million in assets.

Shibarium’s woes affected the Shiba Inu price, as some of its fees were to be converted into SHIB and burned. However, the network is not making money and is not contributing substantially to the burn process.

Now, the developers are working on the biggest upgrade in the network that will be launched in the second quarter of next year. The upgrade, known as Zama, will transform it into a privacy network by focusing on encryption.

Still, it is unclear whether the upgrade will boost Shiba Inu price. For one, it is unclear whether the upgrade will attract more developers to the network, as the number of privacy-focused chains in crypto has increased. 

They include popular names like ZkSync, Linea, and Scroll. Cardano will launch Midnight, its zero-knowledge chain, in December.

The pessimism on Shiba Inu likely explains why whales and savvy investors have continued to dump the token in the past few months. Smart money investors sold millions of tokens recently and now hold 43.15 billion tokens, down from 44 billion earlier this month.

Shiba Inu price technical analysis 

The weekly chart shows that the SHIB price may be on the verge of a strong bearish breakout in the coming months. It formed a double-top pattern at $0.00003365 and a neckline at $0.00001090. This is often a highly bearish reversal sign in technical analysis.

The token has already moved below the neckline, confirming the bearish outlook. It remains below the 50-week and 100-week Exponential Moving Averages, while the Average Directional Index has risen, a sign that the downtrend is strengthening.

Therefore, the token will likely continue falling as sellers target the next key support level at $0.0000063, its lowest level in 2023.