What is Shiba Inu (SHIB)?
Shiba Inu (SHIB) appeared in August 2020 as a dog-themed meme token on Ethereum, created by an anonymous developer known as Ryoshi. Pitched as a community experiment, it has since grown a wider ecosystem that includes the ShibaSwap exchange and the Shibarium network.
- Type
- Meme token (ERC-20)
- Launched
- 2020
- Consensus
- Runs on Ethereum
- Max supply
- 1 quadrillion SHIB (fixed, reduced by burns)
- Swap network
- Ethereum
- Sector (Messari)
- Cryptocurrency
How Shiba Inu works
SHIB is a standard ERC-20 contract, so transfers and balances are secured by Ethereum's proof-of-stake validators rather than a chain of its own. The project also runs Shibarium, a separate layer-2 network, but the token swapped here is the Ethereum-based SHIB.
What SHIB is used for
Most activity is trading and holding, with SHIB acting as the common currency of its community. It is also paired in liquidity pools on ShibaSwap and other decentralized exchanges.
SHIB supply
All one quadrillion SHIB were minted at launch with no further issuance. Half went to Vitalik Buterin, who in 2021 burned most of it and donated the rest, and community burns to dead addresses have continued since.
Before you swap SHIB
SHIB is priced in fractions of a cent, so double-check the number of tokens and decimals shown in the quote before you confirm. You receive it as an ERC-20 on Ethereum, so the destination must be an Ethereum address.