• Ryoshi hasn’t been active on social media since last year.
• SHIB founder’s older comments hint at a continuation of the project without him.

Anonymous founder of Shiba Inu (the meme-themed crypto project), Ryoshi, has stepped down from the SHIB project. Additionally, he has deleted all his social media messages and blog posts since the beginning of the week. Since launching the project in august 2020, Ryoshi’s real identity has remained secret.

It is unknown why he was mimicking the anonymous identity nature of bitcoin founder, Satoshi Nakamoto. Furthermore, he has allowed the project to be running without his full involvement. This approach is similar to how Dogecoin co-founders Jackson Palmer and Billy Markus have been involved in the Dogecoin community.

SHIB project to continue without founder

The project’s lead developers have said that it will continue until it becomes a fully decentralized community. Thus, it would have been in fulfillment of Ryoshi’s ultimate plan for the meme-coin project.

Often, Ryoshi has downplayed his importance and role in the Shiba Inu project. Hence, he has often hinted that he would step down from the project altogether. A part of a previous blog post from him on medium reads, “as I have said before, I’m nobody. My presence isn’t important.”

“Even if the efforts to unmask my true identity are successful, it would have no significance over anything. I’m only a guy with zero importance, always typing on the keyboard. I’m Ryoshi, but anyone else can replace me.” This post is part of the posts he has deleted from the internet.

Currently, Ryoshi still has an active Twitter account, but no posts are under it. However, he has two posts on Medium, which he recently published. The two blogposts were farewell messages to the ShibArmy.

Can these posts be from a scammer?

Some industry analysts suggest that a scammer may be impersonating Ryoshi’s real identity. Some evidence suggests that the idea of an impersonator might be true. One such example is that older posts linked with Ryoshi’s blog now display the words “deleted their account, or this user is no longer active.”

However, there is still a separate account that displays his name and profile image. The first of his medium post reads, “I’m not important and will go without any notice.” Then, he encouraged the Shiba community to keep growing the project.

The second medium post also reads, “the ShibArmy isn’t one person, and any one of them can be Ryoshi. All represent the ShibArmy glory! End.” Despite the possibility of an impersonator using the real Ryoshi’s social accounts and persona, a member of ShibArmy still published a goodbye message to the Shiba Inu founder.

In his message, the ShibArmy member, Shytoshi Kusama, also promised to uphold the values of the project’s founder. Part of Kusama’s message states that “our mythos at SHIB is made more mystic and impressive by the desire of our project’s founder to remain anonymous and take no active involvement in the running of the project.”

He added, “We started from nothing and grew exponentially. We established a path that gave relevance to all meme tokens.” SHIB, Shibarium, Leash, Shi, Bone, Shibaswap, Treat, Shibacoin, and Shibazone represent aspects that define our growth as a community. The last one is particularly important because it embodies local SHIB meetups. Every other project in this community support or uses any of these aspects.

No effect of the news on SHIB price

Nevertheless, the news hasn’t had any effect on SHIB price. The digital asset is up by 3.1 percent in the last 24 hours and trades at about $0.00001209. However, it is still 86 percent off its peak price of $0.00008616, which it set last October. Also, SHIB has gained 54 percent over the past 12 months. There aren’t many other digital assets that have achieved this feat.