Dogecoin developer: Working with Elon Musk since 2019

Dogecoin developers told Decrypt that they have been working with Elon Musk since 2019. Musk "has been encouraging them to increase trading volume," provided "a lot of advice and suggestions," and shared his vast network of contacts.

The team of four core developers welcomed Musk’s proposal but rejected his offer of funding, saying they were optimistic that with his help they could further reduce the cryptocurrency’s energy consumption.

Musk tweeted Thursday that he is working with Dogecoin developers to "improve transaction efficiency on the system," a day after he said Tesla would no longer accept bitcoin as a payment method and was looking at other cryptocurrencies that use (less than) 1% of bitcoin's energy/transaction volume.

With Musk's support, the price of Dogecoin soared from $0.008 in January 2021 to a record high of $0.71. However, this cryptocurrency was originally just a joke and has remained a mystery so far.

As the market heats up, Dogecoin developer Ross Nicholl said that interest in developing the cryptocurrency has peaked. He said: "We are seeing a large number of developers now devote themselves to this work."

Nicholl said Dogecoin developers are currently completing the cryptocurrency’s 1.21 upgrade, the largest since 2019 and laying the groundwork for further upgrades.

He explained: “From an end-user perspective, the main highlight is that we are working on how to increase synchronization speeds. The upgrade will also ensure that wallet backups are always valid and make it easier for service providers to integrate Dogecoin.”

The team’s next goal is to reduce transaction fees from the current average of $0.4 to $0.01. “It will be a negotiation with miners,” Nicholl said. “But we have to convince them that this is healthy for the network.”

Dogecoin is modeled after Bitcoin but uses a different code, Scrypt, which uses less energy and is more in line with Musk's new eco-friendly stance on cryptocurrencies. Nicholl said that Dogecoin's energy consumption can be reduced to make cryptocurrencies more environmentally friendly.

While Musk seems to be keen on taking Dogecoin to the moon, Nicholl and other Dogecoin developers are a down-to-earth bunch.

Today, the “joke coin” is under the wing of the most powerful man in the world.