Old DOGE, New Tricks? Developers Release New Core With Faster Synch Speed
Developers for Dogecoin, the meme-based cryptocurrency that somehow has parleyed cuteness into a more than $6 billion market value, are trying to make sure that the Shiba Inu-represented coin’s tech is just as good as its hype.
The developers announced Sunday evening they’ve released a new version of the protocol’s core that promises improved synchronization speed and reduced default mempool expiry time.
Developers say they’ve significantly improved the speed at which a DOGE node can upload blocks, by removing expensive integrity checks that were performed each time a block is sent to another node.
In addition, the new core also cut the default time that transactions are cached in the mempool from 336 hours to 24 hours.
DOGE, which was released as a joke back in 2013, periodically grabs the the crypto-buying public’s imagination, prompting surges in its price before falling back down to trade at less than a penny a coin.
Recently though the coin has become part of the crypto zeitgeist after capturing the imagination of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has made a side business of tweeting DOGE’s praises at almost every turn. Rocker Gene Simmons, who describes himself as “God of Dogecoin,” Snoop Dogg (or DOGE), and even a porn star Angela White have also become DOGE lovers.
In its most recent run-up DOGE moved well into the top 10 list of most valuable cryptocurrencies with a market cap of more than $10 billion, overtaking much more “serious” coins. After while DOGE has given back a lot of those gains, it’s well ahead of where it had fallen to in the past. It’s still the 14th-most valuable crypto with a market cap of $6.27 billion and a per coin price of just under five cents at press time.
That increase in price has incentivized its developers to make the technology underpinning that adorable Shiba Inu more robust and not just be about a pretty face.
“People say it’s a joke coin but we’re very careful to take care of the code. When it took off there was a resurgence in attention and we want to keep the currency operational,” DOGE lead maintainer Ross Nicoll recently told CoinDesk.
