Shytoshi Kusama, the pseudonymous lead developer of the Shiba Inu project, recently provided some information about the beta testing for Shibarium, a layer two blockchain designed to address the shortcomings of the $SHIB token’s host chain Ethereum, namely low speed and high transaction cost.

Here is what Binance Academy says about Shiba Inu ($SHIB):

“Shiba Inu (SHIB) is a dog-themed meme cryptocurrency named after a Japanese dog breed. It was created in 2020 by an anonymous developer named Ryoshi, who designed SHIB to be an alternative to Dogecoin (DOGE) on the Ethereum blockchain.

“SHIB is an ERC-20 token with a decentralized exchange called ShibaSwap. The SHIB roadmap and ecosystem also features an NFT art incubator called Shiba Artist Incubator, 10,000 ‘Shiboshi’ NFTs, and an NFT game Shiboshi Game.

“Shiba Inu had an initial circulating supply of 1 quadrillion tokens. Ryoshi locked 50% of the token in Uniswap to create liquidity and sent the other 50% to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s wallet. However, Vitalik decided to burn 90% of the coins and donate the remaining 10% to charity.“

Bone ShibaSwap ($BONE), according to the Shibarium team, is “the native token selected to pay for gas transactions and reward Validators and Delegators within the Shibarium protocol.” And fortunately for $SHIB HODLers, Shibarium burns $SHIB with every transaction, making $SHIB more scarce.

In a blog post published last Saturday (March 11), Kusama announced the launch of PUPPYNET, which the Shibarium team calls “the EARLY Beta Test of the Shibarium Network.”

Kusama wrote:

“Shibarium is a layer 2 blockchain that allows anyone to build DAPPS, integrate into IRL businesses, and power projects with it. It is low cost, burns Shib in the process, and is being adjusted as the beta test continues over the next few months.“

Anyone can play with this early public beta of Shibarium by visiting a new website that has been set up for this purpose.

It is great, of course, that fans of the Shiba Inu project can now play with this beta version of Shibarium because, for example, it allows them to see how low gas fees on Shibarium will be once it gets its public launch:

However, one question that seems to be in the minds of many people in the SHIB community is when will this beta test period end so that they can use the “real” Shibarium.

Well, according to the following tweet by “LUCIE,” a prominent member of the SHIB community who seems to be in close contact with Kusama, last Thursday (March 9), she was told by Kusama that he estimates the beta period will last two months but it could take as long as four months:

Currently (as of 9:35 a.m. UTC on March 14), $SHIB and $BONE are trading at around $0.00001092 (+2.9%) and $1.47 (-0.8%), respectively.