Elon Musk wanted to finance Dogecoin development – team refused
Elon Musk announced these days via Twitter that he was working with the Dogecoin developers to improve the transaction efficiency of the cryptocurrency. That’s not the whole story.
After the Dogecoin inventors Jackson Palmer and Billy Markus said goodbye to the development of the Altcoin they had created as a crypto corruption, a small group of part-time developers remained who wanted to ensure that the campfire in the Dogecoin crypto cave did not go out .
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Sudden Spotlight: Doge developers are getting a lot of attention
Ross Nicoll, Michi Lumin, Max Keller and Patrick Lodder have been looking after the altcoin with the dog’s face ever since. Until April there were still five of them, but the developer, who had worked under the pseudonym “Sporklin”, had succumbed to cancer.
The part-time developers were largely unknown until May 14, 2021, until Tesla and SpaceX boss Elon Musk posted the following tweet:
Working with Doge devs to improve system transaction efficiency. Potentially promising.
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2021
He’s working with the Dogecoin developers to improve the system’s transaction efficiency. That is potentially promising. In another tweet, he specified goals. If it were possible to accelerate the block processing time by 10 times, to increase the block size by 10 times and to reduce the fees by 100 times, the Dogecoin would win big.
The part-time developers Musk was talking about were at least surprised by the sudden onset of public interest in their people – and apparently not particularly enthusiastic either.
Musk and Doge’s core team have been working together since 2019
Decrypt managed to make a zoom call with Ross Nicoll, the leading developer behind the Dogecoin. Nicoll gave colleagues an insight into the Musk connection, which – it turns out – was established years ago.
After that, Musk and the Doge developers have been working together since 2019, whereby Musk’s contributions tend to be to suggest features that he sees as necessary and advantageous for the market. At the beginning of the cooperation, according to Nicoll, Musk even offered to finance the further development of Dogecoin out of pocket. But the team would have refused.
And so the remaining four developers are still working on the Dogecoin protocol, which is based on Bitcoin’s core, in addition to their main jobs. Accordingly, upgrades take place at most if there is also a new Bitcoin core. The biggest Dogecoin update since 2019, version 1.21, is currently in work.
Elon Musk keeps himself up to date on the development quite intensively and very often brings valuable tips. Especially his knowledge of payment systems – Musk helped found PayPal – helps the team further.
Reducing the carbon footprint is also an important concern for Musk. Here, the team has already succeeded in reducing energy consumption to around seven percent of the consumption of Bitcoin. Honestly, you have to admit that this is essentially based on the use of Scrypt. Litecoin, which is also based on Bitcoin, uses this newer algorithm, while Bitcoin uses the older SHA-256 algorithm.
Musk brings a lot of vigor and has to be slowed down again and again by the team, says Nicoll. He would always like to take the direct route from A to Z, says Nicoll, characterizing the self-proclaimed Dogefather. He would like to overlook the fact that there is no direct route from A to Z in IT.
Dogecoin sees an influx of developers
The new popularity has given the project a lot of interest. Nicoll likes that. After all, one can hardly talk about a decentralized cryptocurrency when only four developers are working on the protocol. Musk’s tweet would have started a veritable “avalanche of developers” who now all wanted to work on Dogecoin.
That is to be welcomed. However, he will not switch to Dogecoin development full-time. On the contrary, he will soon be starting a new job outside of the crypto industry. It seems that the part-time developer vigor is not necessarily in line with the Musk’s vigor.
