The long-anticipated ShibaSwap has finally launched, a decentralised exchange with yield farming elements that has already attracted US$690 million in total value locked (TVL) in less than 24 hours.

The project is part of the Shiba Inu ecosystem. Propelled in part by the success of Dogecoin, the meme coin came out of nowhere to become a top 20 crypto in May and earn a Coinbase listing in June.

“This is just the first project of many to be championed by the decentralized groups which believe in the Shiba ethos and share our vision of freedom within a decentralized future,” the project’s pseudonymous “top dog,” Shytoshi Kusama, wrote on Medium.

Users can stake their Shiba Inu tokens on ShibaSwap to earn more tokens that are part of the Shiba ecosystem – such as BONE and LEASH.

It wasn’t clear immediately what returns the Binance Smart Chain project was yielding, but it was believed to be in the triple or perhaps even quadruple digits.

From the first two weeks of ShibaSwap’s launch, 1,000 BONE tokens were being minted as rewards every 13 seconds – ten times the normal rate.

For those new to defi, total value locked (TVL) is the standard metric to measure a project’s success. Across the entire defi ecosystem, there’s been US$57.3 billion in TVL — assets being staked in a specific protocol.

Lending platform Aave is the leading defi project, with $US11 billion in TVL; ShibaSwap’s US$690 million would put it right behind C.R.E.A.M Finance in the No. 16 spot, according to Defi Pulse.

C.R.E.A.M., another lending project, has US$699 million in TVL – but that project is 11 months old.

Two developers, however, warned that the project remained vulnerable to a “rugpull” in which the developer drains all the locked money from the protocol.

The Shiba Inu team was reportedly taking steps to address these concerns with a “timelock” function that would prevent a quick rugpull, but it hadn’t yet been implemented.

At noon AEST, Shiba Inu tokens were up 2.4 per cent. The project had a market cap of US$3.4 billion, making it the No. 26 crypto.

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