The value of Shiba Inu is currently down about 35% year-over-year, and the memecoin volume at the beginning of April 2026 was around $0.000006, which is significantly different from the $0.00000923 range it reached in early January.

The meme coin has spent the last three months on a longer decline, which lasted until last weekend. Several converging phenomena explain why the decline has been so persistent and why the path to economic recovery is currently uncertain.

Chain Weakness and Shibarium Adoption Stopping

The most damaging blow to the core SHIB case comes from your own Layer 2 network. Since Shibarium launched in August 2023, meme coin price movements have been tied to interest and activity on the Layer 2 network.

However, on-chain data shows a clear decline in user activity and demand across the network. The decline in Shibarium user activity began in September 2025, when the network faced one of: biggest attacks in its history, and the consequences were prolonged beyond direct financial loss.

Before the incident, daily transactions processed on Shibarium ran into the millions; after this feat their numbers dropped to only thousands. Currently, as of April 4, the number of daily trades is approximately 1,230 in the last 24 hours, and on April 4, activity dropped to just 557 trades. Shibariumscan.

That said, it’s also worth noting that Shibarium he recently underwent major surgery infrastructure modernization, including full reindexing of backend systems, which may have contributed to a short-lived slowdown in transaction throughput over the past few days.

Traders continue to retreat with waning confidence

The derivatives market is also showing signs of sinking confidence in the Shiba Inu breed. The latest data reveals a noticeable decline in the number of open trades, which means that investors are closing their positions and moving away from the Shiba Inu. Shiba Inu open interest on major exchanges now stands at $54.25 million, down 16% from the $65.23 million recorded at this time last month, according to Coinglass data.

The decline is even more pronounced when we look at the annual high. Open interest stood at $145.40 million in January, meaning the current level reflects a piercing 63% decline since then.

Even more worrying is the augment in currency inflows as enormous amounts of SHIB indices are transferred to trading platforms, which usually precedes selling pressure. According to data from CryptoQuantShiba Inu net flow to exchanges is positive 6.9 billion SHIB over the last 24 hours, which means more Shiba Inus are being sent to cryptocurrency exchanges than leaving them. Interestingly, this netflow number recently reached a height of approx 39 billion SHIB in 24 hours.

However, SHIB’s pricing problems are structural to the entire meme coin niche. The market capitalization of all meme coins now stands at $34 billion, down from a year-to-date high of over $109.7 billion. according to data from Coingecko.

Featured image from Adobe Stock, chart from Tradingview.com