Key Takeaways
Shiba Inu’s mystifying lead developer, Shytoshi Kusama, has again come out of hiding to defend his work on the project – as criticism of him and the broader team continues to ramp up.
Despite the drastic plunging of the meme coin’s price since its meteoric highs in 2021, Kusama has remained dedicated to the project’s future.
On Sunday, Sept. 22, in a now-deleted post on X, a disgruntled community member slammed Kusama and his team as “immoral” and “fraudulent.”
The post garnered significant attention, so much so that Kusama eventually responded.
Reiterating his commitment to “completing Ryoshi’s mission,” the anonymous founder who launched the meme-coin in 2020, the lead developer hit back.
“I have only done well for Shib, and will continue to do so until, and after, I complete Ryoshi’s vision with or without your blessings,” Kusama wrote on X .
The post was met with a mix of support and pushback from the community.
One X user wrote, “Don’t care about everything they say. We love and trust @ShytoshiKusama. But people want more descriptive information.”
Another posted, “But you keep what you are building a secret, it is not reflected in the prices, we live in a country with inflation, it becomes even harder for us to wait, tell us what you are building so that our support for you will be even stronger.”
Kusama is the pseudonymous developer and leader of the Shiba Inu project. The anonymous lead developer assumed leadership in May 2022 when Ryoshi, the meme coin’s founder, announced he was leaving crypto.
Despite their anonymity, Kusama has remained active on social media platforms, particularly on X, where they communicate updates and roadmap milestones for the project.
Over the last few years, the community has called for Kusama to reveal their true identity – but the developer has stayed firm on keeping it a secret.
During a masked podcast appearance in August, Kusama reaffirmed the decision to remain anonymous: “It’s not a goal that I have. I’m no one special, definitely not a looker by any means. So, there’s no need for my face to become a public figure.”
The Shiba Inu team has also spoken out in defense of anonymity within the crypto industry.
“The Shib devs, despite remaining anonymous, have consistently delivered, proving that integrity speaks louder than a public identity,” said Shiba Inu marketing lead Lucie in a post on X.
SHIB is a meme coin that emerged as an experiment in community-driven projects in August 2020, launched by an anonymous person or group using the pseudonym “Ryoshi.”
The coin was initially inspired by Dogecoin, another meme-based cryptocurrency, and features the Shiba Inu dog (a breed of dog from Japan) as its mascot.
Unlike Dogecoin, which is based on Bitcoin’s technology, SHIB is an ERC-20 token built on the Ethereum blockchain, which allows it to be part of DeFi ecosystems.
In an interview with Arabian Business , Kusama revealed they wanted the project to be the “world’s first trillion-dollar decentralized entity.”
“Right now less than 5 percent of the world is on crypto – not only do we see it exploding, but we see memes being the gateway to crypto and blockchain, and Shiba Inu being the brand that will lead the world from Web2 to Web3,” Kusama said.
The Shiba Inu project has not been plain sailing. Since the token saw major success in 2021 with a massive price surge, the meme coin has failed to live up to its great early impressions.
According to CoinGecko, the price of SHIB has dropped 82.75% since its peak in October 2021.
This has unsurprisingly led to upset within the community, although some have placed all of the blame on to Kusama. However, Kusama revealed plans to step down as leader and hand over all control to the community by the end of 2024.
“At the end of this year, we will hand everything over to the community, and we step away,” Kusama told Arabian Business.
His colleague, Dhairya, claimed they were once just “normal community members.”
“We started off by buying tokens off the exchanges like everyone else. And we just took the experiment and the vision that was laid out by Ryoshi to its completion,” Dhairya said.