Before Elon Musk made Dogecoin (DOGE) his favorite darling, the crypto with the iconic Shiba Inu was evolving in limbo, only used for internet memes and other crypto-jokes, so stalled was the project. But that was before the “Dogefather” and his recurrent trolling. The strange and bullish impulse of the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX for Dogecoin has even reactivated the original foundation of the latter.
The (triumphant?) return of the Dogecoin Foundation
The initial launch of the Dogecoin blockchain occurred on December 6, 2013. Although presented from the start as a parody of Bitcoin, especially by Jack Palmer (one of its two main founders), the friendly and second-degree aspect of this altcoin helped attract a community to it that has made it survive until today.
As early as the beginning of 2014, a Dogecoin Foundation was thus born, to gather its supporters and to contribute to the development and adoption of DOGE.
However, this foundation had fallen into oblivion for many years, until this August 16, 2021. Indeed, on that day, the Dogecoin Foundation announced its reinstatement:
“We are here to accelerate the growth effort, helping current and future Dogecoin Core developers work full-time through sponsorships, as well as providing a welcome point for new contributors who wish to help the project.”
Goal: to protect and serve the DOGE
The Foundation reiterates that it owns the Dogecoin brand and logo, and that it “will keep them for the community.” It wishes to prevent any appropriation by private projects, no doubt to avoid “the Craig Wright syndrome” which notably succeeded in having Bitcoin’s white paper removed from the Bitcoin.org website (before the fightback was organized).
The nonprofit also seems full of ideas and plans to bring real interest in blockchain back to Shiba:
“The Dogecoin Foundation is also looking to the future of the broader Dogecoin ecosystem, and in the coming weeks will announce new projects that will complement the current Core Wallet, to enable faster integration and easier APIs for financial, social and charitable projects that want to use Dogecoin (…)”
Sought-after backers and jarring advisors
Starting from scratch, or almost, this foundation must also deal with the most pressing needs, namely finding sponsors and donors to fund its operations.
“Our goal is to build a group of annual sponsors who can cover the activities of the Foundation and a modest development team. Our initial goal is to secure a three-year budget, so that we can hire a minimal team to improve Dogecoin full-time, without having to worry about job security.”
Dogecoin Foundation announcement
Indeed, among the members of its advisory board, we find of course Billy Markus, co-founder of Dogecoin, and Max Keller, one of the few long-time developers of Dogecoin, but – more surprisingly – we also discover Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum (ETH), and Jared Birchall, the CEO of Neuralink, who undoubtedly represents the interests of Elon Musk (the latter being a co-founder of the company).
Even if the crypto-joke was still smiling not long ago – and will a priori continue not to take itself too seriously – we must realize that it has found a strong ally in the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX… so much so that a space project and a satellite called “Doge-1” will be launched in 2022.
