[DigitalToday reporter Jinju Hong (홍진주)] Activity on Shiba Inu's layer-2 blockchain Shibarium has slowed sharply, raising concerns about the broader SHIB ecosystem.

On June 30 (local time), blockchain outlet DeCrypt reported that Shibarium's daily transactions recently fell to about 1,170, while SHIB's price is down about 95 percent from its all-time high.

The main issue is that Shibarium has yet to show the ecosystem-expansion role that was initially expected. Since launch, Shibarium has processed a cumulative total of more than 1.56 billion transactions, and nearly 270 million wallet addresses have been created. Recent on-chain data, however, show network activity has clearly slowed, contrary to early expectations.

That trend is coinciding with weakness in SHIB's price. SHIB is currently trading at about $0.0000054. It has fallen 5.5 percent over the past week, 22 percent over the past month and 63 percent over the past year, and the drop versus its all-time high is about 95 percent. It was also cited along with current market sentiment that investor interest is shifting to artificial intelligence-related cryptocurrency projects.

The market is particularly pointing to a token burn pace that is falling short of expectations. Since its launch, about 410.84 trillion SHIB have been burned. That equals about 41.08 percent of the initial issuance of 1,000 trillion tokens. But burns carried out through Shibarium have totaled only about 1 billion SHIB. Expectations that Shibarium would sharply increase SHIB burns based on transaction fees have been cited as the backdrop to assessments that results so far have been limited.

Recent burn volumes have also been small. About 2.32 million SHIB were burned over the past 24 hours, while about 19.35 million SHIB were removed from circulation over the past week and about 110.02 million SHIB over the past 30 days. Participants who have supported the Shibarium ecosystem had expected transaction fees to act as a catalyst for increased burns, but actual figures have fallen short of initial expectations when the network launched.

A halt in holder growth is also weighing on the market. The number of SHIB holders has reportedly stayed around 1.5 million for about 18 months. With limited new inflows, slowing network activity and price weakness continuing together, some market participants are raising doubts about whether Shibarium can become the ecosystem's "utility engine."

Optimism remains, however. The expectation is that activity could rebound if ecosystem upgrades, new dapp launches, additional partnerships and a recovery in the cryptocurrency market continue. The key point to watch is whether Shibarium can regain actual usage and whether higher transactions can translate into SHIB burns and an expansion in the holder base.