What is Dogecoin?
What is Dogecoin?
Dogecoin is an open-source cryptocurrency named after the popular Internet meme doge, which is an image of a shiba inu, a Japanese hunting dog.
What are the key characteristics of Dogecoin?
Dogecoin is a fork of the cryptocurrency Luckycoin, which in turn is a fork of Litecoin.
- Coin mining algorithm: AuxPoW (auxiliary proof-of-work).
- Hash function: Scrypt
- Issue: unlimited
- Time to find a block: 1 minute.
- Reward size: 10,000 coins per block (initially miners were rewarded randomly up to 100,000 coins, in March 2014 a fixed reward was set).
- Difficulty algorithm: DigiShield
- Mining complexity: adjusted with each block
- Inflation rate: 5.2 billion DOGE per year
- Transaction processing speed: 6 minutes
- Transfer fee: 1 DOGE, regardless of amount
Who, when and why created Dogecoin?
Dogecoin was launched after Australian Jackson Palmer, a sales associate at Adobe Systems, decided to joke about the rapidly growing number of cryptocurrencies on November 27, 2013. He tweeted that he was investing in a new digital currency and expressed confidence in its imminent success. One of Palmer’s followers, a Front Range Community College student, suggested making the idea a reality. News of the “dogecoinet” began to circulate online, and Palmer decided to turn words into action.
He bought the domain Dogecoin.com, created a basic version of the site, put a picture of a coin with his favorite meme doge on the homepage, and published an appeal: “If you want to make Dogecoin a reality, get in touch.
Palmer was contacted by American programmer Billy Marcus, who wanted to create a mock cryptocurrency that would surpass the popularity of bitcoin, as well as be distanced from the controversial history of other coins. He liked Palmer’s idea and they decided to turn Dogecoin into a real cryptocurrency on the bitcoin blockchain.
The genesis block was released on December 6, 2013, and Dogecoin was officially announced on December 8. A few hours after the coin’s appearance, a mining pool was created and the first block was formed.
The founding duo still performs under the playful moniker “Shibetoshi Nakamoto,” but Palmer left the project in 2015. The lead developer is Max Keller, and the other developers are Ross Nicholl and Patrick Lodder.
How has Dogecoin evolved?
Soon after Dogecoin appeared, its users began to get involved in charity with the help of the Dogecoin Foundation, created in 2014: then they raised funds to send the Jamaican bobsleigh team to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, as well as to launch two water wells in Kenya, to eliminate the consequences of flooding in Kashmir, and they also financed NASCAR racer John Wise.
Dogecoin now has an active community, this cryptocurrency is available on almost all exchanges and is supported by many multi-currency wallets.
One of the most popular scenarios for using Dogecoin is to pay social media users who create or share content.
On September 5, 2018, the Dogethereum Bridge, a demo of the Dogethereum Project (DOGX), a smart-contract-based system that allows DOGE to move to and from the Ethereum blockchain, and potentially scalable to other compatible ecosystems, was demonstrated.
Dogethereum is based on Dogecoin and runs on the Ethash algorithm. During the launch of DOGX, all Doge users received DOGX coins at a ratio of 10000:1 (10000 Doge for 1 DOGX). However, the main Dogethereum branch on Github has not been updated since September 2018, the project’s social networks are abandoned, and the volume of trading on the only exchange is virtually zero.
