The team behind the well-known memecoin Shiba Inu (SHIB +2.03%) has raised $12 million by selling its yet-to-be-released token, TREAT, to venture capital investors outside the United States. These investors include Polygon Ventures, Mechanism Capital, Big Brain Holdings, Shima Capital, Animoca Brands, Morningstar Ventures, Woodstock Fund, DWF Ventures, Stake Capital, and Comma 3 Ventures, as announced by Shiba Inu on Monday.

Although some of these investors, like Mechanism Capital and Shima Capital, seem to be based in the U.S., Shiba Inu’s lead developer, known as Shytoshi Kusama, stated that none of the investors are U.S.-based, although full entity names may not be disclosed when questioned.

The fundraising for this round began a few months ago and concluded earlier this month, according to Kusama. However, he declined to comment on the valuation. Still, a source with direct knowledge of the matter revealed that it was a staged round, with each stage occurring at valuations of $75 million, $100 million, and $200 million, respectively.

Kusama mentioned that the token round includes both pre-seed and seed rounds.

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The TREAT token, according to Shiba Inu, will function as the “utility and governance token” of its new privacy-focused Layer 3 blockchain, which is being constructed on Shibarium, its Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain.

TREAT will be the last non-stable token from the Shiba Inu ecosystem, said Kusama, adding that the ecosystem will introduce a new token called Shi later this year. The ecosystem currently includes popular tokens like the SHIB memecoin, BONE, Shibarium’s governance token, and LEASH. Despite the fact that the TREAT token has not been released yet, CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap are already displaying some trading volume for certain TREAT tokens. Kusama referred to this as a “scam.” The genuine TREAT token will be minted by The Shiba Inu Mint S.A., a Panama corporation, according to Kusama.

Shiba Inu is developing its new Layer 3 blockchain using fully homomorphic encryption technology from cryptography company Zama, which recently raised $73 million in funding. FHE is considered the “holy grail” of cryptography, enabling end-to-end data encryption, even during processing. “This new encryption chain aims to address multiple issues in crypto, including privacy and trust for Shiba Inu’s extensive community of tens of millions and the next billion crypto-curious individuals,” said Shiba Inu.

The new blockchain is intended to comply with regulatory requirements. “It’s important that we maintain a project that conforms to international law while protecting the privacy of data, and security of individuals,” Kusama said. “By allowing people to both be private yet still gain credentials to verify their identity, our entire system extends security and compliance at the same time.”

Kusama declined to disclose the name of the Layer 3 blockchain to “ensure that there are no scammers” like fake TREAT tokens.

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The new blockchain is scheduled to release a testnet in the third quarter of this year and the mainnet “after thorough testing,” according to Kusama.

Source: theblock.co

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