Shiba Inu has slid roughly 35% year-to-date, trading near $0.000006 in early April 2026 — a significant drop from the roughly $0.00000923 range it reached in early January. The meme token has been on an extended decline for the past three months, a slide that continued through the recent weekend. Multiple converging factors help explain why the weakness has been persistent and why a recovery looks uncertain. On-chain activity and Shibarium adoption have stalled Shiba Inu’s price has been closely tied to activity on its Layer‑2 network, Shibarium, which launched in August 2023. But on-chain metrics now show a clear deterioration in user engagement. The downturn began in September 2025 after Shibarium suffered one of the largest attacks in its history; the fallout extended well beyond the immediate financial losses. Before the incident, daily transactions on Shibarium were in the millions. After the exploit they collapsed into the thousands; Shibariumscan data puts 24‑hour transactions at roughly 1,230, with activity dipping to as low as 557 transactions on April 4. Developers also recently completed a major infrastructure upgrade — including a full reindexing of backend systems — which may have temporarily depressed throughput in recent days. Derivatives flows and exchange inflows point to eroding trader confidence Market positioning suggests traders are pulling back. Data from Coinglass shows Shiba Inu’s open interest across major exchanges at $54.25 million — down about 16% from roughly $65.23 million a month earlier. The fall is starker versus January’s peak: open interest then stood at $145.40 million, meaning current levels are about 63% lower. At the same time, large amounts of SHIB have been moving onto exchanges, a classic precursor to selling pressure. CryptoQuant reports a positive netflow of 6.9 billion SHIB to exchanges over the past 24 hours, and inflows have surged as high as 39 billion SHIB within a single day. Broader weakness in the meme-coin sector Shiba’s troubles reflect a wider pullback across meme tokens. The combined market capitalization of meme coins has compressed to about $34 billion from a year‑to‑date high above $109.7 billion, according to CoinGecko — underscoring that SHIB’s headwinds are, in part, structural to the niche. What to watch Key indicators for a potential turnaround include renewed growth in Shibarium transactions and developer activity, stabilization or a rebound in open interest, and declining exchange inflows. Until those metrics show clear improvement, Shiba Inu’s near‑term outlook is likely to remain clouded by weak on‑chain fundamentals and cautious market sentiment. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news