Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently heaped some praise on the Shiba Inu (SHIB) network following a transaction that he performed involving the meme coin. His statement immediately impacted SHIB’s price, with the crypto token recording some gains in the last 24 hours. 

Shiba Inu Performs Beyond Expectations

Vitalik mentioned in an X (formerly Twitter) post that “SHIB massively outperformed” his expectations. He made this statement while revealing that he had donated SHIB to the Future of Life Institute (FLI). The Ethereum co-founder suggested that he had made this donation long beforehand in fear that the transaction would take a while before being processed. 

However, that was not the case, as indicated by Vitalik’s praise for Shiba Inu, which means the transaction was processed faster than he expected. Meanwhile, in his tweet, Vitalik alluded to a “crypto relief” situation, and it is worth mentioning that this isn’t the first time that the Ethereum co-founder has made a donation with the meme coin.

In May 2021, Vitalik donated over $1 billion worth of crypto (which included 50 trillion SHIB tokens) to the crypto campaign relief. That was an Indian COVID relief fund kickstarted by Polygon’s co-founder Sandeep Nailwal to help out with the high number of COVID-19 cases the country was experiencing. 

Meanwhile, the SHIB tokens that Vitalik donated were reportedly part of the 500 trillion SHIB he had received from the creator of the meme coin. Interestingly, Vitalik burned approximately 420 trillion worth of SHIB coins (almost half of the token’s circulating supply as of then). He explained then that he did this to support the meme coin. 

Evidence Of Shiba Inu’s Growth

Vitalik’s recent statement about Shiba Inu also exemplifies how the ecosystem has grown since the meme coin was launched in 2020. SHIB has progressed from being just a meme coin, which was probably just created for fun, to becoming a crypto token that provides real-life utility. Its utility has also become more profound with the launch of the layer-2 network Shibarium.

Shibarium was designed to help improve the Shiba Inu ecosystem by improving transaction speed and lowering gas fees. Therefore, it is not surprising that Vitalik is getting a better feel of Shiba Inu than when he made a transaction with the meme coin in 2021. His statement is a testament to this fact and could serve as a much-needed endorsement going forward.

At the time of writing, SHIB is trading at around $0.00003055, up over 3% in the last 24 hours according to data from CoinMarketCap. 

SHIB price at $0.000031 | Source: SHIBUSDT on Tradingview.com

Featured image from CoinMarketCap, chart from Tradingview.com