The war among meme coins for dominance has been rising with more and more contenders popping up over the years. While Dogecoin and Shiba Inu have maintained their positions as the largest meme coins in the game, the possibility of losing these positions is still very real. Just like Shiba Inu was able to briefly flip the Dogecoin market cap back in 2021, it seems Shiba Inu is now at risk of losing its position to competitors who have raised cult-like followings on social media.
Despite the market crash, the Shiba Inu market cap is still above $7 billion, putting it at a relatively safe distance away from its rivals. However, with meme coin culture usually triggering rapid rallies for coins like PEPE and MemeCore, this gap would be quickly filled.
According to data from CoinGecko, MemeCore, which is currently the third-largest meme coin by market cap, is sitting at a $4.05 billion market cap compared to Shiba Inu’s $7.1 billion market cap. What this means is that it will take less than a 100% move from MemeCore to actually surpass the Shiba Inu market cap. Historically, this is an easy feat for meme coins, which are known to rise sharply in a matter of hours or days.
PEPE comes in at fourth place with a close $4 billion market cap, almost matching the market cap of MemeCore. Given this, the same logic as MemeCore applies in this case, in the fact that it would take less than a 100% increase in price for it to surpass the market cap of Shiba Inu.
However, these moves suggest that the Shiba Inu price does stay muted and barely moves in the times when the rivals are rallying, which is rarely the case. But with the Shiba Inu team running into some problems recently, the second-largest meme coin by market cap could have a hard time keeping up.
The Shiba Inu ecosystem recently ran into problems when its Ethereum Layer 2 network, Shibarium, suffered a major bridge attack. In the wake of the attack, the attackers were able to get away with more than $4 million in assets such as Ethereum and Shiba Inu BONE through a bridge validator attack.
This drain put a strain on the already struggling network, whose Total Value Locked (TVL) has remained below $5 million in the last four months. In the wake of the event, the Shibarium network saw its TVL crash from $4.58 million to $2.64 million at the time of this report, citing data from DeFiLlama.
So far, efforts to recover the stolen assets have failed, as placing a bounty on the loot has not worked. The Shiba Inu team has since said that they are working with a cybersecurity firm to put stronger security measures in place, as a postmortem report is expected. Meanwhile, the bridge remains paused with no definite timeline for restoration, and a plan for asset recovery/compensation is yet to be published.
