The Dogecoin Foundation: A Complete Guide

Many modern cryptocurrencies have their own supporting foundations, but the Dogecoin Foundation particularly stands out for its peculiar history, unique contributions, and once-divisive nature within its own community.

The Dogecoin Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to facilitating Dogecoin’s technical growth and promoting its value to the outside world. 

To be more specific, the three primary aims of the foundation are:

So while they can be hands-on in creating new projects for the network, the foundation also works off-chain with charities and events, for example. Needless to say, they have a lot on their plate, but without the foundation, the Dogecoin network would have become a wild wasteland.

When Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer introduced Dogecoin on December 6, 2013, the foundation formed the month after. But why did it arrive early in the token’s life cycle?

As mentioned previously, Dogecoin wasn’t designed to be taken seriously. Therefore, when it received more than 1 million visitors and rose nearly 300% in value for the first 30 days, problems were inevitable since it wasn’t built to manage and protect this many users at once.  

This became clear in late December when Dogecoin experienced its first major crash after China stopped investing in the Bitcoin (BTC) economy. Dogecoin would be hacked three days later, costing users millions of tokens. 

The hack inspired a ragtag community group called “SaveDogemas” to appear and donate tokens to those who lost them. However, after its unexpected rise to relevancy, it became clear that a bigger and more authoritative organization would be needed to keep the network safe going forward. 

There’s no denying that the Dogecoin Foundation has achieved some incredible feats in its time, but it took a while before its community members fully embraced it. 

The Dogecoin Foundation was established in January 2014. It is composed of developers and community members. 

Though the foundation aimed to incentivize Dogecoin’s growth and acceptance, it initially focused on charity work to help garner the token a positive reception.

In the same month, the foundation managed to fund two successful projects. The first, Doge4Water, saw the community raise $30,000 worth of Dogecoin at the time to build a well in the Tana River Basin in Kenya in partnership with Charity Water.

The second was a fundraiser for the Olympic Jamaican Bobsled team, which had qualified for the Sochi Winter Olympics but couldn’t travel due to limited funds. The Dogecoin Foundation collected more than $25,000, which allowed the bobsledders to live out their dream. 

After the foundation’s early charity efforts, Dogecoin became seen as a ‘generous’ or ‘charitable token.’ 

Many community members expressed concern over this on blogs and social media sites. In one particularly popular Reddit post from the time, users complained that their token was being given away too liberally: “Please stop saying we are a tipping currency and just for fun. We are serious too”. 

Most people targeted Eric Nakagawa, an outspoken foundation member who many claimed to be treating the token like too much of a charity and not a legitimate cryptocurrency.

At the same time, thousands of Dogecoin holders had lost tokens to a scam led by Alex Green.’ Though Green had proposed that he was a well-intentioned trader who wanted to make buying and selling DOGE easier, he secretly did this to earn trust and gain donations before running off with the profits. 

As one developer explained, “Because the Dogecoin community was based wholly on generosity, we were like sheep to a slaughter.”

Clearly, the foundation had placed too much emphasis on charity, which led to some major players leaving the company by the end of 2014. 

Ben Doernberg, who had attempted to stop the Alex Green debacle, and the aforementioned Eric Nakagawa were the biggest names to depart.

At the same time, Dogecoin was facing technical issues. The limit on the number of circulating Dogecoins was becoming an issue considering how popular the network had become, and this meant fewer miners were joining the blockchain, which made it less secure. 

All this resulted in onlookers and publications criticizing Dogecoin’s future, citing its sudden price drops and expressing that the foundation’s troubles were taking an “Immense toll” on the token itself. 

The Dogecoin Foundation would remain completely silent for seven years, with many presuming they had disbanded. 

Despite this, Dogecoin still saw significant growth throughout this period, especially in surprising 2018, when it finally reached mainstream interest and briefly surpassed the $2 million market cap. 

Just before the “Crypto Winter” crash at the tail end of the year, Dogecoin would see a value rise of 103% in April, compared to 40% for Bitcoin. 

Dogecoin was riding high on the immense publicity it was receiving, but it would manage to keep up the momentum the following year thanks to favorable comments made by Elon Musk and a little help from Reddit’s WallStreetBots. 

Dogecoin survived despite the foundation’s absence, arguably doing