Dogecoin FAQ

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8 Jan 2024

179

DOGECOIN

the people’s c r y p t o c u r r e n c y

Dogecoin is many things to many different people. At its heart, Dogecoin is the accidental crypto movement that makes people smile!
It is also an open-source peer-to-peer cryptocurrency that utilises blockchain technology, a highly secure decentralised system of storing information as a public ledger that is maintained by a network of computers called nodes.
More than this, though, is the ethos of Dogecoin, summarised in the Dogecoin Manifesto, and its amazing, vibrant community made up of friendly folks just like you!
The Dogecoin community cares about supporting each other, being kind, teaching people about cryptocurrency, fundraising, having fun, making memes, and being absurd. This is nicely captured by Dogecoin’s unofficial tagline: Do Only Good Everyday.
Moreover, the Dogecoin community is passionate about championing Dogecoin as a viable and legitimate alternative currency to traditional fiat money. To this end, the Dogecoin ecosystem is ever-expanding in dynamic and organic ways, and aims to become a highly utilised currency of the People, for the People, whilst always staying true to its origin of being the most fun crypto!
At its core, Dogecoin is useful, personable, welcoming, and reliable – and we’re very happy you’re here.

Do Only Good Everyday.

The Dogecoin community cares about supporting each other, being kind, teaching people about cryptocurrency, fundraising, having fun, making memes, and being absurd. This is nicely captured by Dogecoin’s unofficial tagline.

Dogecoin FAQ

A whale holds nearly 30% of Dogecoin supply! Is this true?

A common source of FUD surrounding Dogecoin is the claim that certain wallets holding a large percentage of the supply are owned by private investors or so-called “whales”. In reality, many of the top Dogecoin wallets are cold wallets or hot wallets controlled by exchanges and brokers, and they thus represent Dogecoin held in custody for thousands - or hundreds of thousands, even - of people.
To those accustomed to blockchain analysis, many of those wallets appear as wallets managed by trading platforms, as they exhibit patterns of activity and volume that were typical of crypto exchanges or brokerage services holding large amounts of collateral. In particular, the Dogecoin community has identified the exchanges and brokerage platforms behind some of the largest wallets, including the infamous “whale” holding 30% of the supply. This was possible through a bit of community sleuthing that involved collecting circumstantial evidence and tracking deposits and withdrawals from exchanges to private wallets. As it turned out, that infamous whale wallet, which was split across several addresses in October/November 2021, contains the holdings of hundreds of thousands of retail holders.
Customers of these exchanges and brokerage services sometimes voluntarily opt to hold Dogecoin within the custodial solutions offered by these platforms; other times, they are forced to do so, since some platforms might not be allowing withdrawals to private cold wallets. Whenever this has been the case, the Dogecoin community has been asking insistently and ceaselessly for these platforms to enable withdrawals. Little by little, over the past months, more of these services have enabled withdrawals to private wallets.
It is also important to educate the community in this sense so that they can understand the benefits - but also the responsibility - of decentralization and non-custodial wallets, which is at the core of a permissionless, decentralized cryptocurrency. Similarly, it is important to realize that this is also a problem of maturity of the Dogecoin ecosystem: as more and better non-custodial solutions are built for Dogecoin, holders will realize the benefits and importance of self-custody.
Not your keys, not your Dogecoin, after all.

Dogecoin has no utility!

Oh yes it does, and it always has! The simple fact is that money has utility - and Dogecoin is money! Indeed, Dogecoin is one of the few cryptocurrencies that has been used for this main purpose from day one.
Dogecoin was first meant to be a joke - and it served, and will serve, this purpose very well. It almost immediately became a means to tip and encourage others to go and achieve something: the Jamaican bobsled team, the water wells in Kenya, the Dogecoin car, and many more crazy initiatives the community supported over the years. As a tipping currency, thanks to its low fees and speed of transactions in comparison to competing chains for a long part of its existence, Dogecoin has never stopped working for its intended use.
Over the years, it became possible to use Dogecoin and spend it in online stores. The past 2 years have seen an explosion in adoption, with Dogecoin payment integrations provided by third parties like BitPay and Coinbase and several providers providing prepaid cards supporting Dogecoin as a funding source. Shops can also integrate directly with the Dogecoin blockchain, in particular through the JSON-RPC interface. The Dogecoin Foundation, alongside the ecosystem of developers, is planning to facilitate this further by creating libraries that will streamline and standardise implementations.
Development is ongoing to enhance Dogecoin and make it fulfill its original promises while being competitive with other cryptos. With several groups of developers currently building for Dogecoin and its ecosystem, Dogecoin will find new purposes and uses.
As per the Dogecoin manifesto, Dogecoin focus lies on being useful, personable, welcoming, reliable, while maintaining a unique sense of fun.

Can you put a cap on Dogecoin?

Right now, and for the next hundred years or so, Dogecoin operates like, and will continue to operate like, most other crypto assets. “Capped” assets are nowhere near mined out – and will continue adding to their supply, just like Dogecoin, for the foreseeable future.
Dogecoin’s supply is not unlimited, because it has an absolute limit of issuance per block, per day, per year – just like other coins do. The only difference is that Dogecoin’s issuance does not have an end date. Therefore, Dogecoin is only “infinite” over “infinite time”. Over finite time, its issuance is, in fact, finite.
This annual issuance is needed to pay miners and keep the network secure. Other chains, like Bitcoin, which theoretically will see their yearly issuance stop completely in 2140, will need to find a way to secure their network at that time (if it will indeed still exist), or the design of their consensus mechanism will need to change completely. Simply stated, putting a cap on Dogecoin would render the network insecure and vulnerable to attacks.

Dogecoin has no developers!

Oh, yes it does - and it always has!
Dogecoin’s primary purpose has always been to be used as a currency. Dogecoin was originally a fork of a cryptocurrency called Luckycoin - itself a fork of Litecoin. Billy Markus, co-creator of Dogecoin with Jackson Palmer, acted as a solo developer for the first Dogecoin Core releases. In 2014, Billy and Jackson left Dogecoin development, and a new development team was formed. Over the years, the Dogecoin development team has consisted of a small group of maintainers coordinating the work of more than 40 contributors.
In 2015, starting from Dogecoin Core 1.10.0, the Dogecoin development team decided to re-fork Dogecoin off Bitcoin, re-applying Litecoin changes on top of the Bitcoin codebase. Thus, throughout its history, Dogecoin inherited already feature-complete code bases, and it has shared a good part of its identity with Bitcoin. Its uniqueness came from changed parameters, optimizations, and parts of the code that were not inherited from Litecoin or Bitcoin. These changes were always aimed at making Dogecoin a viable currency for day to day spending, with a focus on utility and ease of use.
In the future, the plan is to focus more efforts and resources to enhance Dogecoin so that it fulfills its aim to become a currency of the People. This will require a combination of part-time contributors, volunteers, but also full-time staff including developers and engineers.
The Dogecoin Foundation’s Trailmap lists various projects as the ecosystem works towards its shared aim of becoming a currency for the People, by the People! This Trailmap is not authoritative, but an indication of where to go that is open for community feedback.
Even though a lot of actual work is done outside of this repository, some of the development efforts can be followed on Github in the Dogecoin Core repository. r/dogecoindev on reddit is another good channel to discuss everything around Dogecoin’s development and interact with the developers.