Shiba Inu Launches Shibacals, An Innovative Collaboration Studio For Real-Life Assets

With its slogan "Print anything you can mint," the Shiba Inu development team, headed by its pseudonymous lead developer Shytoshi Kusama, has launched its latest service called Shibacals.

Last week, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) executed a series of regulatory enforcements in the cryptocurrency industry. This resulted in two of the world's largest centralized crypto exchange platforms, Binance and Coinbase, being sued over allegations of securities law violations. Additionally, several large market capitalization crypto assets were classified as securities.

While the crypto market was attempting to slowly recover from the bear run caused by the spectacular collapses of crypto businesses like Terra in May and FTX in November of last year, the recent regulatory action by the SEC fueled another bear run. This led to a drastic plummet in overall confidence in the market.

True to their word, Kusama, despite the controversies in the industry, chose to remain silent and focused on building instead of voicing opinions on various issues through social media platforms. In an exclusive interview with International Business Times, Kusama granted the privilege to learn about the latest initiative developed to further advance the Shiba Inu ecosystem and bring it closer to Ryoshi's vision.

The initiative's project managers, who go by the pseudonymous names Sentinel-Shibacals and 4Ward, discussed the purpose of the initiative, its integration within the expanding Shiba Inu universe, its use case, and the numerous possibilities it offers not only to the Shib Army (the dedicated and loyal community members) but also to the broader cryptocurrency space.

Shibacals is a Shiba Inu service that enables users to produce premium quality items for themselves, communities, or businesses. It is primarily designed as a collaboration studio, combining Shiba Inu with physical or real-life assets (hence the term "Shibacals").

This revolutionary service, the first of its kind in the cryptocurrency industry, is in partnership with the American multinational tech giant Hewlett-Packard (HP). HP is responsible for printing the products using its state-of-the-art 3D printing technology.

While Shibacals empowers users to bring their ideas to life, it sets itself apart from similar services in the market by providing authentication for the real assets or products produced using the service. This is made possible through the use of NFC chips developed by HP.

With Shibacals, users can have IRL toys, plushies and even Champion hoodies with Shiba Inu designs, to name a few.

Shibacals transcends boundaries and when Kusama said the project will "connect everything and demonstrate how we have aligned with the best decentralized technologies or protocols, offering a comprehensive decentralized product covering governance, IRL, MV, Blockchain, Al & DAOs, in a way that cannot be replicated by anyone else on the planet," they really meant it.

In what way, many will ask.

Kusama explained that Shibacals allows users to transform their Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) into IRLs or in-real-life, tangible assets, which is not only limited to Shib Army, since the lead developer shared that the service is available to anyone, even for those myriads of NFT projects in the industry that wanted to "print stuff for their community."

How does this work?

According to Kusama "each project will have its own financial model" and if for instance, a certain NFT project wants something printed, they can tap Shibacals and the team will "work with them, make a test, confirm, and then print them/create them and authenticate and ship!"

Shibacals can also be used by those who want to create an exclusive product. The team will authenticate the product using the NFC chip and attach an NFT to it. Kusama explained that after undergoing the service, the product becomes an exclusive and limited edition asset.

According to 4Ward, Shibacals can print anything the user wants, stating, "If you have the rights to it, we can make it." When asked if anyone can print an NFT, they clarified that it depends on whether the NFT comes with the rights. However, since most NFTs do, Shibacals can make it happen.

The process of authenticating software or hardware is crucial for verifying the genuineness of a product and making it significantly more challenging, if not impossible, for counterfeiters or fraudsters to operate.

While eBay offers a similar authentication service through its Authenticity Guarantee, Shiba Inu, through Shibacals, becomes the first in the cryptocurrency industry to provide this kind of offering.

This is just the NFT aspect of Shibacals, which primarily benefits the Shib Army with Shiboshis. These 10,000 non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are generated on the Shiba Inu ecosystem and permanently recorded on the Ethereum blockchain. Users can easily have their Shiboshis printed and transformed into tangible items. Shibacals is an extraordinary service that shows deep thought even at the conceptualization stage.

One reason for this is that the Near-Field Communication (NFC) chip attached to the products is not exclusive to Shibarium, the layer-2 scalability solution of the Shiba Inu ecosystem. It can also be customized to work on any blockchain the users prefer, including Polygon, BTC Ordinals, among others.

So, Shibacals covers the NFT aspect as well as the Shibarium elements of the Shiba Inu ecosystem. But what about "Shib: The Metaverse," which is Shiba Inu's version of the metaverse?

"Step 1: You get a physical product. Step 2: The product has an NFC chip embedded. Step 3: The holder scans the chip, and it authenticates the product. Step 4: The holder can then be redirected to various places, such as special VIP lounges in the metaverse," explained Sentinel-Shibacals.

With Shibacals, you are fundamentally creating an incredible loop between the digital and physical world, according to Sentinel. The team's goal in Shibacals is to help build a bridge between crypto, NFT projects, and real-life goods.

Shibacals also breaks traditional boundaries in terms of pricing, production, and shipping. According to Sentinel, producing physical products usually requires a minimum quantity, but Shibacals is breaking that barrier to support the digital side. The team does not set any minimum quantity for physical and digital orders.

Regarding shipment, the service is available worldwide, allowing users to have their products shipped wherever they are.

When asked about the motivation behind this initiative, Kusama stated, "IRL is a valuable component of moving the needle forward for Shib." They added that finding ways to support the Shib and the greater crypto/NFT community led to the creation of Shibacals, as what better way to help the community than by enabling them to print whatever they mint.