Shiba Inu (SHIB) is an Ethereum-based ERC-20 token launched in August 2020 by an anonymous creator known as Ryoshi. It began as a community-driven meme cryptocurrency inspired partly by Dogecoin, but has since expanded into a broader ecosystem involving decentralized finance, nonfungible tokens, gaming, governance, cross-chain infrastructure, and the Shibarium layer-2 network.