Shib Army Flags Scammers Encouraging Users To Buy Fake TREAT Token

Shib Army, the fierce and loyal members of the Shiba Inu community, raised the alarm on scammers encouraging people to buy TREAT token, the soon-to-be-launched decentralized token of the Shiba ecosystem, ahead of the official launch of the layer-2 scalability solution Shibarium.

The past week was extremely eventful for the Shib Army since the Shiba Inu pseudonymous lead developer Shytoshi Kusama published a blog written in Japanese titled "Long Live Shiba Inu," which contained major news and developments about the Shiba ecosystem.

Among these are the potential roll out of the highly anticipated layer-2 scalability solution Shibarium in August, the launch of World Paper and the detailed discussion of the decentralized governance token TREAT, which according to the lead developer, is designed to govern and empower community projects.

"It's there that the Worldpaper will be on display, fully completed, where all Shib branded projects will be revealed, and where Treat will first be publicly discussed in detail. It's also highly likely we will discuss and even release our long awaited L2 Shibarium.," Kusama, fondly called Shy by the Shib Army, said in the English version of the blog.

The update triggered all Shiba Inu decentralized tokens such as SHIB, BONE and LEASH to rally and reach new heights.

However, malicious actors, fraudsters and scammers seemingly took advantage of the hype surrounding the launch of Shibarium and amid the price surges of the Shiba Inu tokens, spread on Twitter a token with the same name as the soon-to-be-launched token TREAT, tricking people into believing that it is the same token that the Shiba Inu development team is gearing to officially debut sometime this year.

Shiba Ecosystem Official/ShibariumTech Marketing Specialist who uses the Twitter handle @LucieSHIB alerted the community about this new scheme making rounds on the social media platform Twitter, which was picked up by other Shib Army in a collective effort to prevent others from falling prey to this ploy.

"It is truly disheartening to see individuals resorting to deceptive tactics in an attempt to sell tokens that haven't even been launched yet," the Shib Ecosystem marketing specialist told International Business Times in an exclusive interview.

"This kind of behavior not only undermines the trust and integrity of the cryptocurrency community but also puts innocent investors at risk," she added.

"It is crucial for everyone to exercise caution and thoroughly research any token before making any investments. Let's strive for transparency and honesty in the crypto space to ensure a safer and more reliable environment for all," LucieSHIB further said.

Aside from creating blogs on Medium, several Twitter accounts promoting the token also created groups on Telegram using the picture and name of the Shiba Inu lead developer to deceive people into believing they represent the Shiba ecosystem.

It is worth noting that this is not the first time that bad actors try to ride on the popularity of the Shiba Inu ecosystem and try to trick investors into believing the token they are promoting is officially the decentralized token of the Shiba Ecosystem.

In March, Lucie also raised the alarm on people maliciously using TREAT for their selfish gains.

She also shared to the community Kusama's message at the time so other Shib Army won't be deceived by the malicious scheme.

"Remember that we said not to ape into any test tokens. They don't even know that we will name it treat. So they're just making stuff up," Kusama said as quoted by Lucie.

"Ignore basically anything not from an official account. We haven't deployed a thing there. So no. It's someone trying to scam as always. We will announce the next move we make. So there is no confusion," the Shiba Inu pseudonymous lead developer added.

"TREAT will launch as part of our ecosystem development," Kusama said in a blog post released in July 2022.

In the blog, the lead developer also mentioned that TREAT is a reward token for holders and derives rewards in "SHIB: The Metaverse" and "Shiba Eternity" while providing balance to the SHI, a stablecoin which is currently in development.

"Treat will not only serve this purpose, but will derive rewards for the Metaverse, and the blockchain version of the Shiba Collectible Card Game, as well as for helping to provide balance to Shi! This is a huge step in the final landing of this massive project to full decentralization," Kusama said and noted that "TREAT will benefit our current SHIB ecosystem holders greatly, the tokenomics will not disappoint."

The pseudonymous lead developer also said at the time that the team will reserve a limited supply of TREAT to some of the most loyal members of the team who have helped in the completion of the criteria that allowed the development team to fulfill the vision of Shiba Inu pseudonymous creator Ryoshi.

"We have reserved a limited supply of Treat for our most loyal Breed members that have stuck with us for months and months helping develop confidence to protect and grow the ecosystem with patience, energy, and support. They have gone through a lot to help us, the development team, finish the criteria that will allow us to fulfill Ryoshi's mission," Kusama said.

Meanwhile, SHIB, the native token of the Shiba Ecosystem saw a 1.29% loss and was trading in the red zone at $0.000007377 with a 24-hour trading volume down by 15.72% at $66,174,538 as of 3:45 p.m. ET on Wednesday based on the latest data from CoinMarketCap.