Shiba Metaverse Opens Public Land Sales, But Holders Aren’t Impressed

Popular memecoin Shiba Inu (SHIB) opened public land sales for its upcoming metaverse on Saturday. But the launch was met with a somewhat lukewarm reception from the community, with SHIB prices deepening losses.

A main criticism of the launch was that the sale was in Ethereum (ETH), and required a MetaMask wallet. The project said it will add SHIB support “soon.”

Land prices start at 0.2ETH ($300). The public land sale marks the third and final phase of the metaverse’s land sales, which reportedly netted developers over $20 million in ETH.

The metaverse will feature a total of 100,595 lands to be unlocked over time. Initially, only 32,124 plots will be available for sale.

Shiba Inu token deepens losses

SHIB prices were down 2.4% after the announcement, having slightly deepened their losses after the launch. The token is currently trading around $0.00002392, nearly a one-month low.

While the token had initially rallied in response to the metaverse’s reveal, it has since reversed all of its gains. SHIB holders criticized the project’s decision to not support SHIB. The metaverse’s early land sales were only accessible to holders of LEASH tokens and Shiboshi NFTs- two other tokens in the Shiba Inu ecosystem.

So far, the project accepts only ETH for land sales. While developers said this was a in a bid to maintain SHIB’s liquidity, the move was heavily criticized.

SHIB losses come amid a broader downturn in the crypto market, which saw market capitalization sink 2.3% from yesterday. LEASH tokens also appeared to be under selling pressure, and were down nearly 5% in the past 24 hours.

Shibarium a cash grab?

But one of the most popular decriers of the project is Dogecoin founder Billy Markus. Better known by his online pseudonym Shibetoshi Nakamoto, Markus had called the metaverse a cash grab with little utility.

How is making a random metaverse and selling fake land with Ethereum adding utility to their project. If people wanna give the devs even more money go ahead but if I was a shib holder I would be annoyed.

Markus had called on SHIB developers to focus more on supporting the blockchain, instead of raising money through land sales.