The Shiba Inu ecosystem's Layer-2 blockchain, Shibarium, has undergone a significant infrastructure upgrade over the past 30 days, marked by a major server migration and a full chain re-indexing. According to the official Shiba Inu-focused account, Shibizens, this process is not a slowdown but a foundational rebuild to scale the network for future developments.
The Shibarium block explorer is currently being rebuilt from scratch, with synchronization approximately 45% complete as of March 23, 2026. This reconstruction has led to a temporary discrepancy between displayed and actual on-chain data. While the explorer shows roughly 2.4 million blocks and 168 million transactions, the real network data exceeds 14 million blocks and 1.56 billion transactions. A similar gap exists for wallet addresses, with 5 million displayed versus over 270 million actual addresses.
Shibizens attributed these differences to incomplete indexing, noting that only about 51% of blocks are currently indexed. The team reassured users that if tokens or NFTs are not visible on the explorer, it is likely due to this indexing delay and not a loss of assets, emphasizing that "the Shibarium blockchain itself remains fully intact." The account stated, "Shibarium is not lagging. It is rebuilding at scale for what’s coming next."
Concurrently, development focus is shifting to Layer 3 solutions. Testing for Shibarium's L3, including initiatives referred to as Shib Alpha and ShibClaw, is now underway. Participant Woofswap indicated the L3 is under testing, and a new L3 explorer went live for early testing on March 21. On the testnet, Puppynet, block time remains steady at about five seconds, and there has been an increase in AI-driven automated contract activity.
