What is Dogecoin (DOGE)?

Dogecoin is the original ‘memecoin’, with its creators aiming to build a "fun and friendly Internet currency" based on the "Doge" meme. It has gained a devoted following that includes influential figures like Elon Musk, who have pushed it into the public consciousness.

Who uses Dogecoin?

Despite starting as a joke, Dogecoin now has a number of payment integrations and is increasingly being used as money – particularly in online tipping for content creators on platforms such as Reddit and Twitter. Payment integrations include third parties like BitPay and Coinbase, while several providers of prepaid cards support Dogecoin as a funding source. Shops can also integrate directly with the Dogecoin blockchain.

Who created Dogecoin?

Dogecoin was created by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer in December 2013. Markus, a former IBM engineer, and Palmer, an Adobe product manager, developed Dogecoin as a parody of the then-burgeoning cryptocurrency market. The cryptocurrency’s name and logo are inspired by the Shiba Inu dog meme that was popular at the time.

What is the Dogecoin Foundation?

The Dogecoin Foundation is a non-profit organisation that supports the development and promotion of Dogecoin. Founded by the cryptocurrency’s original creators, the foundation focuses on supporting community-driven initiatives and charitable causes. The foundation has been involved in various projects, including funding clean water projects and sponsoring events in the cryptocurrency space.

How does Dogecoin work?

Dogecoin operates on a Proof of Work (PoW) consensus mechanism, similar to Bitcoin. In this system, miners use computational power to solve complex mathematical puzzles, validate transactions and secure the network. Unlike Bitcoin, which has a capped supply, Dogecoin has an inflationary supply model, with new coins being issued continuously. This approach helps maintain low transaction fees and encourages its use for microtransactions and tipping.

Proof of Work (PoW)

Dogecoin's PoW mechanism is designed to ensure network security by requiring miners to solve cryptographic challenges. This process involves the competitive mining of new blocks, where successful miners are rewarded with newly minted DOGE. The network’s security and transactions rely on these miners, who ensure that transactions are valid and recorded on the blockchain.

What is the native cryptocurrency of Dogecoin?

The native cryptocurrency of the Dogecoin network is DOGE. It serves as the medium of exchange and reward within the Dogecoin ecosystem. DOGE is often used for tipping content creators, supporting charitable causes, and engaging in various online communities. Its low transaction fees and inflationary nature make it an attractive option for microtransactions and casual use.

Security incidents

Dogechain sidechain shutdown (2026)

Dogechain, a third-party EVM-compatible sidechain built to bring smart contracts and DeFi to the Dogecoin ecosystem, shut down during 2026, with reports of user funds left stranded. Dogechain was never affiliated with the Dogecoin Foundation or built into the Dogecoin protocol itself, so this was not a failure of the Dogecoin blockchain — but it's a relevant risk for anyone holding bridged or wrapped DOGE on another network, since that exposure carries the risk of the bridge and host network rather than of Dogecoin itself. Source: crypto briefing

The above list of incidents may not be exhaustive. As always, it's important that you do your own research to ensure you're comfortable with an asset's associated risks before investing in it.

Third-party security audits

CertiK's Skynet tracker records no completed CertiK or third-party audit, and no bug-bounty programme, for the project it lists as "Dogecoin" — which, on inspection, actually tracks a bridged BEP-20 token contract on BNB Smart Chain rather than the native Dogecoin blockchain. That distinction matters: Dogecoin's base layer is a plain proof-of-work payments chain with no smart contract layer of its own, so it isn't the kind of asset that has a native contract to put through a conventional smart-contract audit in the first place. Its security instead rests on Scrypt proof-of-work consensus and the hashrate it shares with Litecoin through merged mining (see Token supply and concentration below). No recent third-party audit of the Dogecoin Core codebase itself has been publicly located. Source: CertiK Skynet

Token supply and concentration

Dogecoin has no maximum supply. Every block pays a fixed 10,000 DOGE and blocks arrive roughly once a minute, so new supply is created at a constant rate of about 14.4 million DOGE per day, or roughly 5.256 billion per year, permanently — there's no halving and no cap. Because issuance is fixed in absolute rather than percentage terms, the inflation rate slowly falls as the supply base grows; it was around 3.4% during 2026.

Visit BitInfoCharts to see the distribution among DOGE's top token holders.