DOGECOIN

All about the light-hearted, community driven meme-coin (and Elon’s favorite cryptocurrency).

If you have been in the crypto community for some time, chances are you are already familiar with the name Dogecoin (or just Doge). Most only know this cryptocurrency as a meme and can therefore perceive it simply as a joke. However, only a small amount of people has actually done some digging and research and therefore know what Dogecoin stands for, what is it used for, its vision or future plans.

This article is a compact sum-up of all the important information about Doge.

Origins

Dogecoin (DOGE) is an open-source cryptocurrency founded in 2013 by Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer. The name is based on the popular Doge meme and the aim of the project was to be a fun, light-hearted cryptocurrency from the start with appeal well beyond the core Bitcoin audience.

Fun fact: In 2021, Elon Musk has posted several posts about Dogecoin being his favorite cryptocurrency, which led to significant increase in price of DOGE and interest in the project as a whole.

The coin itself is a fork of Litecoin and has similarities as well as differences with Litecoin and Bitcoin. It uses proof-of-work protocol very similar to the Bitcoin’s one but with several differences (one of which is the use of Scrypt technology). This means that same as BTC, DOGE too can be mined. The Doge’s transaction (block) time is also around 1 minute but, in contrast to Bitcoin, its total supply isn’t capped (there’s potentially unlimited amount of DOGE that can be mined).

Dogecoin use-cases

One of the most common uses for Dogecoin nowadays is as a tipping service on Reddit or Twitter, where users can reward others for creation of quality content.

Other than that, Doge is also accepted by a few dozens of vendors and can therefore be used to purchase groceries, food, households or even website domains. Additionally, DOGE can also be used as most other cryptocurrencies for P2P transactions and payments.

It is important to mention, that with Dogecoin being community-driven, it is a cryptocurrency of the people, for the people and by the people. And as such, the community puts a great emphasis on utility of the project, which is well reflected in its future plans. As stated in Dogecoin’s Manifesto: Being useful, we value utility over technical brilliance.

Dogecoin governance

Soon after the foundation of Dogecoin, in 2014, a not-for-profit foundation was formed by members of the Dogecoin team. Goal of this foundation was to provide support, advocacy, trademark protection and governance for the project.

In 2021, the Foundation has been re-invigorated by old-school doge-coiners, members of the original team, along with new members and advisors. (FYI: One of the advisors is Vitalik Buterin, Founder of Ethereum.)

Dogecoin still remains a community-driven, consensus based open-source project. The existence of the foundation doesn’t change that. The direction of the project is formed by many contributors, organisational and individual, to the various projects of the Dogecoin ecosystem.

Future of Doge

As already mentioned before, the Dogecoin puts a lot of emphasis on utility. It is no surprise then, that the future plans and development of the project are aimed in this direction: to increase utility and integration opportunities, make Dogecoin more scalable, accessible and convenient to use and to modernise it so it can keep up with new cryptocurrencies and blockchain projects.

Specifically, The Dogecoin Foundation speaks about diversification (making way for new and faster Nodes) and consolidation (through a written, provable Dogecoin Standard). Dogecoin Trailmap also presents new opportunities for payment providers, retailers, game developers and more to integrate and implement Dogecoin into their projects. GigaWallet Project, which will provide a robust, enterprise scale, multi-user wallet service designed for integrators, should help with this exact goal.

The Foundation is also currently working with Vitalik on crafting a unique Doge proposal for community staking, which would allow everyone to participate in the network.

I highly recommend checking out the Dogecoin Trailmap for yourself as it contains more useful and interesting information and was a heavy inspiration for this last part of the article.