A Trip Down The Memory Lane Of Dogechain: A Personal Account of 1 Year of its Milestones

Aniel Essien
7 min readSep 18, 2023

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I took a trip down memory lane with the Dogechain Family and realized, “We’ve really come a long way even in the craziest market conditions”. I am amazed by the progress and achievements of this network and its community.

Dogechain is a blockchain network that aims to provide a fast, secure, and scalable platform for Dogecoin and memecoin transactions. It leverages the power of sharding, proof-of-stake, and cross-chain interoperability to create a decentralized and inclusive economy for memes.

Dogechain launched its mainnet on September 18, 2022, after months of testing and development. Since then, it has grown exponentially in terms of users, transactions, validators, developers, and partners. It has also delivered several innovative features and products that enhance the utility and value of Dogecoin.

Here are some of the major milestones and achievements of this network during its first year of existence:

1. Chained Mainnet and DOGE Bridge Launch

Dogechain launched its Chained Mainnet and DOGE Bridge to Dogechain for wrapped DOGE — $WDOGE, which is its gas token. This enabled users to transfer their Dogecoin to Dogechain and use it for various purposes, such as paying for the (negligible) transaction fees on the network or participating in the DeFi ecosystem on Dogechain.

This was the first step to creating a decentralized and scalable platform for memecoins and DogeFi. In the following weeks, several applications were already available, where users could plug in their Dogecoin and start trading it on multiple DEXes, mint NFTs, or create their own DOGE-powered projects.

2. DC Token Launch and Distribution

Dogechain launched its native token $DC at 1 trillion total supply, which kicked off its Early Shibes Airdrop leading to the Monthly Burns of unclaimed airdrops. This token has two main use cases — governance and staking incentives. With $DC, users can vote on proposals that affect the network and its parameters, as well as earn rewards for securing the network by staking their tokens.

The airdrop was designed to distribute $DC to as many Dogecoin holders as possible, while the monthly burns were implemented to reduce the supply and increase the scarcity of the token.

3. DC Token Listing on Exchanges

$DC was listed on several exchanges, both centralized and decentralized.

On the centralized side, $DC was listed on Kucoin, Gate, Mexc, Huobi, and more.

On the decentralized side, $DC was available as an ERC20 token on Uniswap on Ethereum, and as a DOG20 token on Quickswap and Fraxswap on Dogechain.

This increased the liquidity and accessibility of the token, as well as the exposure and awareness of the network.

4. Stellar Early Growth Metrics and Traction

Dogechain achieved impressive growth metrics and traction in just a few months after its mainnet launch. In the first weeks, the number of users reached over 200,000 and its TVL shot up to 300 million DOGE bridged at its peak.

Between August to September 2022, it achieved:

● +17.9M transactions

● +221K wallets

● +332M $DOGE bridged over

● +100 dApps building on chain

● +$57M peak 24-hour volume on $DC

● $DC listed on 10 centralized exchanges

● Trended on multiple socials

● Trended on CoinGecko

● Earlier adopters received an incredible airdrop

● Surpassed Ethereum, Cosmos, and other L1s in 24h transactions

5. Weekly Fridays Twitter Spaces

To show its commitment to growth and accountability, the Dogechain team went live with its Weekly Fridays Twitter Spaces for the first time on Sep 2, 2022, and ever since it has been a Friday rule with no breaks, where the team and community interacts, discusses, and share updates.

This was a great way to engage with the community and keep them informed about the latest developments and plans of the network.

6. Governance Platform Launch

Dogechain launched its Governance Platform, Dogegress, where $DC holders can propose, vote, and execute changes to the protocol. This took place on September 21, 2022, enabling users to utilize their $DC tokens to vote on various proposals.

The launch was a crucial step to decentralize the decision-making process and empower the community to shape the future of the network.

7. The Great Burn

Following the popular demand and vote of its community, Dogechain carried out one of the greatest burns in DeFi history. Dogechain burnt 80% of $DC total supply, a bold move that reduced the supply from 1 trillion to 200 billion.

This was to better align with the long-term incentives of all members of the Dogechain community. These 800 billion tokens were valued at more than $2 billion at that time.

The Proof of Burn can be seen here.

8. DC Staking and the veDC Model

On November 14, 2022, Dogechain introduced a long-awaited feature, $DC Staking and the veDC Model as a 2-step staking model that keeps holders committed to the chain with more rewards and governance power.

To keep the tokenomics of the $DC token viable for the long term, the Dogechain team opted for a vote escrow model with predetermined timelocks. In this model, validators and delegators cannot directly stake their $DC tokens. Instead, they need to go through the veDC model and lock $DC for fixed periods to receive $veDC tokens.

This model allows users to receive $veDC tokens, in proportion to the length of their lockup time. The longer the lockup time, the more $veDC they receive, providing them with higher staking rewards and more voting power in governance proposals.

To start staking, visit Dogechain PoS Locker.

9. Shibes Ambassador Program

Also in November 2022, The Shibes Ambassador Program was launched to recruit and reward passionate and talented individuals who wished to contribute to the growth and development of Dogechain.

They help with marketing, content creation, community management, development, etc. The program is open to anyone who shares the vision and values of Dogechain and wants to be part of its journey.

10. Dogechain Grants Program — Round 1 and Battle of the Grants

Dogechain carried out Round 1 of its Grants Program to fund, support, and projects that are building on or integrating with Dogechain. In the first round, 12 projects were handpicked by the team for the grant.

To continue the incentives on building on Dogechain, the team launched the Battle of the Grants, a community-driven contest for projects that wished to grow their communities and be rewarded for it.

The 4-round knockout modelled contest took place on Twitter and allowed any project building on Dogechain to participate. 8 of the participants shared a $10,000 prize pool.

11. Build-A-Doge Workshop

Memecoin trading was one of the main volume drivers at the beginning of the Dogechain network. With several projects launched on the chain of memes and dreams, they contributed to the huge success of Dogechain.

To make it easier for more meme projects to launch, in April 2023, Dogechain launched the “Build-A-Doge Workshop” for no-code memecoin creation.

This is a user-friendly tool that allows anyone to create their own memecoin on Dogechain without any coding skills. Users can customize their token name, symbol, supply, etc., and launch it on the network in minutes.

12. Tiered Burn Proposal

With several raised concerns on tokenomics, Dogechain raised a Tiered Burn Proposal which resulted in the 15% burn of $DC total supply, reducing it from 200 billion to 170 billion.

This proposal was voted on by the community through the governance platform and executed by the team in July 2023.

The tiered burn model was based on the amount of $DC locked by users in the veDC model. The more $DC locked, the more $DC burned. This was to incentivize long-term holders and reduce the circulating supply of the token.

13. The Meme Revolution Campaign

The “Meme Revolution” Campaign, which was the first official DAO “shark tank” type of governance model vote took place for the. The campaign was channelled at incentivizing memecoin projects on Dogechain.

The campaign invited memecoin projects to pitch their ideas and products to the community and compete for funding and support from Dogechain. We all voted for our favourite projects using $veDC tokens and decided which ones deserved to receive more grants from Dogechain.

14. DC Converter

After the Multichain hack, ERC20 DC was rendered worthless, with no utility and liquidity, and to remedy this, the Dogechain team had to quickly develop and launch the DC Converter that allows users and institutions to redeem ERC20 $DC 1:1 for DOG20 $DC.

In the conversion process: Every converted ERC20 $DC tokens are destroyed and converters will be given DOG20 $DC tokens from the Loyal Shibes allocation. Hence, no new tokens would be created for the conversion.

Check for the address: 0xBce77b0d91e98E4524E74Fd378A3af5c9B94528e on Dogechain Explorer.

15. Partnerships

There were also several partnerships in 1 year such as:

- BetFury

- Unipilot

- Binocs,

- Mintpad

- Bitstack

- CyberArena.

These partnerships were aimed at enhancing the utility and adoption of Dogechain and its tokens, as well as collaborating with other platforms and projects in the blockchain space.

Some of the benefits of these partnerships include: integrating Dogechain with gaming platforms, providing liquidity management solutions, enabling NFT creation and trading, facilitating token sales and launches, offering data analytics and insights, etc.

I like to think that this is only the beginning of great things in this memechain. Dogechain has many more plans and goals for the future, such as launching its own NFT marketplace, integrating with more chains and platforms, supporting more memecoin projects, and expanding its ecosystem and community.

As the first-ever blockchain created to advance and grow the memecoin economy, Dogechain is a movement that aims to make blockchain more accessible, inclusive, and enjoyable for everyone. I can’t wait to see what more they have in store for the future.

If you want to learn more about Dogechain and its achievements, you can read the full retrospective article here.

Connect and stay updated with the latest news and updates of the Dogechain Family by joining its social sites: https://linktr.ee/dogechain

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