From Memes to Real-World Impact: How BlockDAG Captured Attention Without VC Funding

In crypto, influence often starts not with code—but with conviction. Dogecoin captured attention by blending memes with money. VeChain attracted real-world partnerships through enterprise utility.

In the ever-evolving landscape of cryptocurrency, projects rise and fall, often defined by the people who believe in them. While many projects gain attention through lavish marketing campaigns or venture capital backing, some projects, like Dogecoin, VeChain, and BlockDAG, have carved out their own paths to success.

Dogecoin: A Meme That Sparked a Community

Dogecoin (DOGE) burst onto the scene in December 2013, the brainchild of Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer. The project was conceived as a light-hearted take on the growing cryptocurrency space, aiming to poke fun at the absurdity that was sweeping the internet at the time.

The coin, which was named after the Shiba Inu meme, started out as a joke, but the community it managed to spark transformed it into a serious asset.

At the beginning of its journey, Dogecoin was priced at just $0.0002. However, the coin saw its turning point in 2021, when a week of viral attention on social media saw the coin’s price increase 216% to $0.0235.

Further price gains saw the coin hit a high of $0.7376 in May 2021, before the coin’s price pulled back.

Despite pulling back 74% from its all-time high, Dogecoin is still up a staggering 95,900% from where it began, trading at around $0.1920 today.

Dogecoin uses a proof-of-work mechanism like Bitcoin, but with a key difference: it has an inflationary model, adding 10,000 coins per minute. This means that the total supply of Dogecoin will continue to increase indefinitely.

While this might seem like a strange model, it has helped to fuel Dogecoin’s popularity. The coin’s community is large and active, and members are constantly creating new memes and jokes about the coin. This cultural relevance has helped to keep Dogecoin in the public eye.

This light-hearted spirit is evident in the project’s tagline: “Dogecoin, created by engineers at Adobe and SpaceX, to help save humanity, and used by cosmonauts to travel to the moon.”

Dogecoin’s rise is a testament to the power of community and culture in the crypto space. It also shows how a project that was never intended to be serious can still have a real financial impact.

VeChain: Bringing Blockchain to the Business World

Founded in 2015 by Sunny Lu, VeChain (VET) is a blockchain project that was created to improve supply chain transparency. The project’s technology can be used to track products as they move through the supply chain, ensuring that they are genuine and of high quality.

The project’s mission is to build a "trustworthy and efficient ecosystem that serves the real economy and society with blockchain technology."

Initially applied to luxury goods, to help brands such as BMW and LVMH combat counterfeiting, the project has since expanded into other industries, including agriculture, logistics, and the auto industry.

Vechain runs on a two-token model. VET is the native token that handles value transfers, while VTHO is used to cover transaction fees. This approach ensures that businesses can use Vechain with predictable costs.

Vechain’s proof-of-authority consensus system offers efficiency and low environmental impact by relying on selected validators to verify transactions and maintain the blockchain.

Currently trading at around $0.0260, VET is down 43.9% over the past year. However, the project still boasts a large market cap of $2.24 billion, placing it among the top 50 cryptocurrencies.

Despite the price downturn, Vechain has become one of the few projects to gain mainstream recognition for its use cases. The project is used by brands to verify the origins of their products, monitor their shipping, and ensure the quality of their products.

This has earned the project respect not only from the crypto community but also from the business world.

Even amid the crypto winter and the broader market shifts, Vechain continues to be one of the few projects actively solving industry challenges with blockchain technology.

BlockDAG’s Early Momentum Was Built by Users, Not VCVhat sets BlockDAG apart is not just its technology but also how it was funded. Before a single venture capitalist joined the project, BlockDAG’s presale managed to raise an incredible $209.5 million.

This wasn’t driven by any massive advertising campaigns or large-scale sponsorship deals. It was driven by users of the project who saw the vision and stepped up early to contribute to the project.

Now in Batch 27, the project has sold over 19 billion coins globally. At the current price of $0.0248, that equals a 2,380%