- Shiba Inu saw its price drop fall by 7% amid allegations that the code used in the Shibarium blockchain was stolen.
- Members of the Shiba Inu Discord community observed that Shibarium shared the same Chain ID with the Rinia Testnet.
- The Shibarium development team has owned up to the mistake causing a recovery in the SHIB price.
Shiba Inu, the dog-themed cryptocurrency, has hit news headlines over the last few hours and saw its price fall by as much as 10% on Thursday. This followed claims that the code used to build Shibarium, Shiba Inu’s Layer 2 scaling network, was copied from another blockchain.
The genesis of the drama was a discussion in Shiba Inu’s Discord community, where one of the members pointed out that Shibarium’s Chain ID Number 917 was similar to that of the Rinia Testnet.
This led to concerns that the code of the much-awaited Shibarium network was plagiarized, occasioning a sell-off and eventual drop in the price of Shina Inu’s native token SHIB.
Is Shibarium Built On Plagiarized Code?
The Shibarium blockchain and the Rinia Testnet chain allegedly have the same Chain ID number. This has sparked debate in the Shiba Inu community, including accusations of code theft against Shibarium developers.
An excerpt of the heated discord discussion made its rounds on Twitter with a user, Racune sharing some of the screenshots from the conversation. One Discord member, Steve, said, “Chain ID is the simplest thing any blockchain developer looks for first when deploying a blockchain.” This is because “using an already existing ID is just incompetent as your chain wouldn’t work properly and everyone trying to interact with your chain would instead interact with the other chain,” the user added.
One of the images shared by Racune states:
The Metaverse team … had no knowledge of what you are seeing on the Shib.io website or within the metaverse video showcased. There were accusations of buying assets without modification or anything else.
Other community members accused Shytoshi, the Shiba Inu founder, saying that he has “created manipulation against the entire team with slanderous lies and manipulation along with members of the community” to do what he wants.”
Shiba Inu developers and other community members quickly addressed the claims, with one of them identifying as JesusM, saying, “there is no evidence that this is a fork of a chain that launched last month.”
In addition, the developers behind Shibarium have come out to explain the similarity, arguing that it was due to a mistake on their part. They had randomly picked Chain IDs for the pre-pod/beta version of the network, which had not been registered anywhere then.
The developers also said they were deploying a new version of the BETA Shibarium network with a unique chain ID, and new deployments would be rare.
Note that the SHIB token has recovered some of its losses after the response from the development team and now trades 3% up on the day. However, the sell-off has caused investors to be concerned about the cryptocurrency’s long-term stability as the technical setup still points to more losses.
Shiba Inu Price Is Still Sealed In A Downtrend
After turning away from the multi-month high at $0.0000157, SHIB has recorded a series of lower highs and lower lows, leading to a descending parallel channel on the daily chart (See below). The price bounced off the lower boundary of the track on March 10 and painted five green daily candlesticks before being rejected by the upper limit of the channel on Wednesday.
The sell-off after the Shibarium allegations saw the meme coin lose key support areas pointing to a continued downtrend. Shiba Inu was trading at the same level with two major moving averages. This was the $0.00001075 area where the 100-day Simple Moving Average (SMA) and the 200-day SMA appeared to converge.
Therefore, producing a daily candlestick above this level would signal the inability of buyers to sustain the ongoing recovery. In such a case, SHIB may turn down with the first line of defense emerging from the $0.00001055 immediate support level. Additional lines of support are found at the $0.000010 psychological level, the middle boundary of the falling channel at $0.0000095, and the lower boundary of the track at $0.00000841.
In highly bearish cases, the SHIB may drop further to tag the $0.00000799 support floor or revisit the June 18 swing low at $0.00000712. This would represent a 33.89% drop from the current price.
SHIB/USD Daily Chart
Apart from the technical chart pattern, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) also validated Shiba Inu’s gloomy outlook. This trend-following indicator was positioned below the middle line in the negative region. The price strength at 43 suggested more sellers than buyers in the market.
On the upside, if buyers manage to sustain the ongoing recovery and produce a daily candlestick above $0.00001075, they would be bolstered to push the price higher. The first obstacle could be met at the $0.00001222 level where the 50-day SMA sat. Overcoming this roadblock would clear the path for a rise to the $0.00001590 level, confirming a full recovery.
