Cryptocurrency Dogecoin (DOGE) was originally conceived as a joke, and no one thought that it would turn into something more than just a joke. The coin, designed by Billy Marcus, was named after an Internet meme, a famous Shiba Inu dog. Then Marcus could not even imagine that the comic coin would take a serious place in the rating of popular cryptocurrencies.
In this article we will take a closer look at what this Coin is and what is its uniqueness.
History of creation
Dogecoin was created by developer Billy Marcus in December of 2013, simply “fan by”. However, an unusual coin almost immediately after the launch attracted the attention of the crypto community: users discussed DOGE on forums, distributed pictures with a funny meme on the Internet.
After the coin became popular on the web, Jackson Palmer became interested in it, who began to run the channel on Twitter and bought the domain dogecoin.com. He created a simple website and added a picture with a logo on which the famous dog-meme was depicted, and also wrote text in Comic Sans.
Marcus stumbled upon this site by accident and decided to partner with Palmer to further develop the coin. Dogecoin was based on another comic coin Luckycoin (LKY), which, in turn, is a fork of Litecoin (LTC), and that one is a fork of Bitcoin (BTC).
Quite quickly, a community formed around Dogecoin that actively participated in the discussion of the life of the coin. In order to popularize cryptocurrency, the developers were engaged in free distribution of DOGE among active participants of official channels on Reddit, Twitter and other social networks. Subsequently, the distributed coins were called shibes.
Today, Dogecoin is a coin that is mainly used to collect charitable projects of various kinds and environmental initiatives.
Team
The coin team is still represented by Billy Marcus and Jackson Palmer, as well as a large community of miners and enthusiasts.
Tell us a little about the developers:
- Billy Markus (on the Internet known as Shibetoshi Nakamoto) - the founder and creator, is responsible for the technical part of the project, including he developed the official Dogewallet wallet, the main and only programmer of Dogecoin. The idea was to create a "positive" cryptocurrency that is not related to "dirty" business such as drugs, illegal weapons and child pornography (a reference to Bitcoin).
- Jackson Palmer - Co-founder of Dogecoin, designer at Adobe. Responsible for dogecoin design and marketing. His participation in the project began with the fact that he made a joke post about Dogecoin and bought the domain dogecoin.com.
But here we need to make a small amendment regarding Jackson Palmer. The fact is that three years ago he announced that he was leaving the project, that he had sold all his DOGEs and that the crypto industry is a crowd of “white libertarian men” who want to make “quick” money on the “hype” around the crypt. However, the Dogecoin community cannot come to terms with this "loss" and constantly turns to the former founder of DOGE, which makes Jackson very angry. He recently spoke out angrily about this on his Twitter account:
People, please do not reach Jackson, he no longer loves doggy 🙁
Technology
As mentioned above, Dogecoin (DOGE) was created on the basis of the Luckycoin (LKY) cryptocurrency, an interesting feature of which was that the miner received a random number of coins as a reward for block generation (hence the name). Initially Mining Dogecoin was also built on this principle - for finding one correct nonce, you could get from 0 to 500000 DOGE, but in March 2014 the reward became fixed. Network complexity is recalculated every 240 blocks.
At its core, Dogecoin is a litecoin fork and uses the same encryption algorithm - Scrypt. Its peculiarity is that the critical value is not the speed of calculation, but the amount of RAM. This requirement allows to use for mining not only highly specialized ASIC devices (which, of course, have already been developed for this algorithm), but also graphic processors (video cards) that have a large RAM — at least 2 GB.
However, Dogecoin has one advantage that distinguishes the coin from Litecoin (and Bitcoin, of which Litecoin is a fork) - this is the speed of block generation. On the Dogecoin network, closing a single block takes 1 a minute, which is 2,5 times faster than Litecoin and 10 times faster than Bitcoin. This property is very important, because besides the fact that the network can process a greater number of transactions, it also has a greater resistance to the double spending attack (the “double spending” attack). At the moment, there is almost 116,3 billion DOGE in circulation. It was originally thought that the Dogecoin issue would end on 100 billion coins, but then the developers announced the endless production of coins.
With the exception of the block generation speed, Dogecoin technology completely coincides with Litecoin, as the idea was not to present revolutionary technological solutions, but to make a comically positive cryptocurrency that would cheer up and amuse the Doge dog with a funny meme.
Advantages and disadvantages
Despite the fact that Dogecoin was created as a joking cryptocurrency, it has significant advantages:
- Low commission payments and fast transaction processing speed - the generation of blocks takes only 1 a minute;
- High resistance to conducting a “double spending” attack, again due to the short closure time of the blocks;
- Due to the fact that Dogecoin technology is not very different from Bitcoin and Litecoin, it is easy to integrate any updates developed for these two coins into the cryptocurrency code;
- A large, united, and, most importantly, positive community that actively participates in the life of the coin;
- A large amount of Coins, which are in circulation, which allows you to successfully use DOGE for trading;
- Most of the popular exchanges have added DOGE as an asset, so the exchange of cryptocurrency for Fiat is very simple.
However, there are also disadvantages:
- Infinite emissions cause constant inflation and coin depreciation;
- Due to the high popularity of Dogecoin, it is impossible to mine alone right now, and therefore miners have to join in pools;
- Dogecoin does not carry any new technology and was created solely as a comic cryptocurrency, which has gained popularity due to “HYIP” and “viral” advertising due to the popular Internet meme.
Collaboration and initiatives
Dogecoin was conceived as a joking cryptocurrency, and few companies take it seriously. Therefore, basically all the cooperation of this coin is focused on charity:
- The Dogecoin Foundation - the company was created by the founders of the coin to communicate with the community and the public, as well as to popularize DOGE in the field of charity and social assistance.
- Doge4Water is a fundraising initiative organized by the Dogecoin Foundation in 2014 and aimed at a project to purify ponds in Kenya. Doge4Water collected about $ 30000.
- Jamaica Bobsled is another initiative of the Dogecoin Foundation dedicated to raising funds for a bobsled team from Jamaica to participate in the Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014. The initiative was supported by $ 20000.
- The 2014 Dogecoin community collected $ 20000 in DOGE coins to support NASCAR racer Josh Wise. As a token of gratitude, Josh decorated his car with a mega-popular “dog” meme Kabos.
- Dogethereum is a hard fork scheduled for September 30, 2018. The creation of a new coin will increase the conductivity of the network compared to Dogecoin and Ethereum (the speed of generating Dogethereum blocks will be only 13 seconds) and create the possibility of cross-chain transactions. This "collaboration" between Dogecoin and Ethereum brings together the best characteristics of both cryptocurrencies.
"Save the DOGE"
A few weeks after the launch of the cryptocurrency, the first major theft occurred. Entire millions of DOGE coins have disappeared from the official Dogewallet wallet for many users as a result of the vulnerability. Because of this, there was a commotion around the coin, and the creators decided to launch the SaveDogemas initiative to save the coin’s reputation and pay damages to holders.
"Dogecoin: Accepted Here"
This may seem unexpected, but Bitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency with which you can pay for real goods and services. Some companies also accept Dogecoin (DOGE) as a means of payment.
So, what can you get in exchange for DOGE:
- Computer games - companies that sell video games were among the first to meet cryptocurrency enthusiastically and began to accept them as payment. For example, on the American siteAllGamer you can purchase popular games like MineCraft, Counter Strike, Left 4 Dead 2 and Just Cause 2 with DOGE. In addition, you can also buy domain, hosting or VR games with Dogecoin. Gift Cards - When you don't know what to give, just give a gift card from a cool brand store. And you can buy it for DOGE, for example, on the eGifter website. Here you can find gift certificates for all tastes - from shops of popular brands to fine restaurants. Besides Dogecoin, the service also accepts Bitcoin and Litecoin.
- Restaurant Dinner - The Iron Rail Diner, located in Maryland, invites all crypto-enthusiasts to enjoy gourmet dining with DOGE. The owner of the establishment believes that cryptocurrencies are the future, so he decided to add DOGE as a payment method.
- Anything - this opportunity is provided by the online store BitcoinShop.us. Its peculiarity lies in the fact that here buyers can pay exclusively with cryptocurrency - no "fiat". The site accepts three coins: Dogecoin, Bitcoin and Litecoin.
Dogecoin-meme - the hero of online creativity
As already mentioned, Dogecoin is a comic cryptocurrency, and, moreover, the most popular in the field of Internet creativity. Meme DOGE has become the character of many comic pictures and funny stories. Keep a small selection to raise the mood:
Course and capitalization. Where can I buy
At the time of this writing (end of September 2018), the cost of one DOGE coin is $ 0,0057, however, despite the low price, capitalization has now reached 664,5 million US dollars, which is very good. In the Coinmarketcap ranking, Dogecoin is ranked 20.
The graph and capitalization of cryptocurrency since the beginning of 2018, looks like this:
The maximum Dogecoin price for the entire existence of the coin was $ 0,0175 (in January 2018 of the year). Now, like all the other Coin, its value has fallen by as much as three times - however, this distinguishes it favorably from other Altcoins, because the cost of some of them “failed” seven or more times.
Dogecoin is a very popular cryptocurrency, so you can buy it on almost any exchange or exchanger for BTC, ETH, USDT, as well as for fiat currency - dollar, euro, ruble.
To store DOGE coins, it is best to use an official Dogewallet wallet or hardware clients such as Tezos or Ledger.
Development prospects
It would seem that one can discuss the prospects for the development of cryptocurrency, which was conceived solely as a joke. However, the project was able to grow into a coin that has a strong community and support in cryptomir. Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency that is most often used for various charity projects and environmental initiatives. In addition, it is accepted by some online and offline stores, and it has also been added to many cryptobirds. All this testifies to the popularity of the coin and its future.
On the technical side, Dogecoin is a fork of Litecoin, but unlike the latter, as well as Bitcoin, it has significant advantages - faster block generation, which is also a guarantee of increased protection against the “double spending” attack, as well as lower commissions.
However, like any other coin, DOGE has its own spaces. Infinite emissions have been the reason for the low price, which in turn makes Dogecoin not a very attractive asset for traders and investors. In addition, the latter also repels the comic "nature" of the coin.
It is now quite difficult to talk about the future of this koin, because in the field of cryptocurrency everything changes very quickly. For example, as mentioned above, Dogecoin hard forks will be held soon, which will be called Dogethereum, and the result of which will be a DOGX coin. This technology will take the best from Dogecoin and Ethereum and present the real technology. Perhaps DOGE participation in this project will affect the popularity and price of the coin. But for now, it’s too early to talk about it.