Activity on Shibarium, Shiba Inu’s official Layer-2 blockchain, increased sharply in recent days, but the move has not yet been reflected in the price of $SHIB.

Shibarium, which launched in August 2023 as a Layer-2 scaling solution built to reduce transaction costs and improve throughput for the Shiba Inu ecosystem, has seen its adoption closely watched as a measure of whether the project can build sustained utility beyond its origins as a meme token.

According to the latest data from Shibariumscan, Shibarium handled 1,180 daily transactions yesterday. That figure represents a notable rebound from the 661 transactions recorded on July 21, which was the second-lowest daily transaction count for July.

The increase means daily transactions rose 78.51% within a few days, pointing to renewed activity on the network after a period of weaker usage. However, the latest transaction total is still far below the millions of daily transactions Shibarium posted during its peak periods.

Some market observers have viewed the rebound as an encouraging development, as investors continue to look for a bullish catalyst that could help reverse $SHIB’s prolonged price weakness. The modest improvement in activity has also raised hopes among some participants that user engagement on Shibarium could gradually recover if the trend persists.

SHIB Price Does Not Track Network Rebound

Despite the rise in Shibarium transactions, Shiba Inu has not seen a corresponding price improvement from the renewed blockchain activity.

The broader cryptocurrency market recorded another sharp sell-off yesterday, pressuring several major assets, including $SHIB. The token declined from an intraday high of $0.000004243 to a low of $0.000004102 before staging a slight recovery.

At press time, $SHIB is trading at $0.000004189. Even after the partial rebound, the token remains down 1.28% over the past 24 hours, 8.21% over the past week, and 0.34% month-to-date.

Shiba Inu Ecosystem Faces Ongoing Concerns

The Shiba Inu ecosystem continues to contend with several issues that have weighed on investor confidence.

The bearish market environment has left the project with few positive developments. Community members have also raised concerns about the disappearance of several key team members from X, multiple unfinished ecosystem initiatives, and persistently low $SHIB burn activity. Burns — the permanent removal of tokens from circulation by sending them to an unrecoverable address — have long been promoted by the Shiba Inu community as a mechanism to reduce supply, but the pace of burns has remained insufficient to meaningfully affect the token’s large circulating supply.

In that context, the recent recovery in Shibarium transactions has led to speculation that long-awaited positive catalysts may be starting to appear. Still, the increase in network activity has not been sufficient on its own to translate into higher $SHIB prices.

More Than 113 Billion SHIB Withdrawn From Exchanges

Even as price performance remains weak, investors have continued to move $SHIB away from centralized exchanges.

More than 113 billion $SHIB tokens have recently been withdrawn from exchanges, bringing the total exchange reserve down to approximately 86.13 trillion $SHIB.

Large exchange outflows are commonly interpreted as a sign that investors are moving tokens into private wallets for longer-term holding rather than preparing to sell. Although this trend has not yet produced a price recovery, it indicates that some market participants continue to hold confidence in $SHIB’s longer-term prospects while the token remains under bearish pressure.