By Alicia Maher
The popular meme coin network has announced public land sales for the upcoming Metaverse project of Shiba Inu. However, it was met with a barrage of criticism and indifference from the SHIB community amid a spiraling price slump.
The long-awaited launch of the virtual land sales has ended following the announcement that it would be launched on Saturday to interested participants.
Reports from the ongoing events show that most community members were critical of the decision to sell to the public using Ethereum alongside a MetaMask wallet. This did not go well with the SHIB community, who viewed the move as ill-advised.
Meanwhile, the project announced that the addition of SHIB support would be completed soon, with no specific date given.
The price for land sales begins at 0.2ETH, which is equivalent to $300. The ongoing public land sale signals the third and last phase of the virtual land sales, which is reported to have netted the developers more than $20 million worth of ETH.
One hundred five hundred ninety-five virtual lands are set to be unlocked after some time, while 32,124 plots of land are available for sale at the initial stage.
Shiba Inu’s Price on a Downward Trend
Following the announcement, the value of the SHIB token has been down by 2.4%, which points to a profound loss due to the circumstances surrounding the sale of the Metaverse lands. SHIB is currently trading at $0.00002392, almost a one-month low.
It is worth noting that the token initially reacted positively to the announcement, but it has already reversed all of the gains it had recorded. SHIB holders criticized the project due to the inability to integrate SHIB support for the Metaverse land sales.
In contrast, the previous Metaverse land sales were only accessible to holders of the LEASH and Shiboshi-NFT tokens, as were the other tokens hosted on the Shiba network.
As a result, the current project only accepts ETH for its land sales which the developers justify as a measure to help maintain the liquidity of the Shiba Inu’s native token.
Additionally, the loss in Shiba Inu’s value happened when the broader crypto market was disarrayed, with market capitalization sinking to 2.3% over the past 24 hours. The LEASH token, which is also part of the Shiba Inu ecosystem, is also under extreme selling pressure and is down by almost 5% in the same timeframe.
Is Shibarium a Fraud?
Since the introduction of the Shiba Metaverse, it has been met with widespread criticism, and one such critic is Dogecoin Co-founder Billy Markus.
The co-founder has slammed the project as another fake random Metaverse project using the Ethereum token to add liquidity to the project. According to Markus, the project is a cash grab with no utility to show for it.
Notwithstanding his criticism, Markus called on the developers to focus more on developing the blockchain instead of raising funds through virtual land sales.