Shiba Inu is an Ethereum-based meme cryptocurrency launched in August 2020 that has developed into a broader ecosystem including ShibaSwap (DEX), Shibarium (layer-2), and an NFT collection. It operates as an ERC-20 token with a total supply of 1 quadrillion tokens, of which approximately 41% were burned. SHIB is used for transactions and participation in the Shiba Inu ecosystem.