The Next Doge? Meme Shiba Inu Owner's New Pup Inspires Official Cocoro Coin

Another dog, another coin? Yes, but this one has a serious lineage—and an official stamp, too.

On Saturday, Own the Doge—the collective that holds the exclusive IP rights to the original Doge meme that inspired Dogecoin—announced that it launched Cocoro (COCORO) on Ethereum layer-2 network Base.

The Base meme coin is named after the latest dog adopted by Atsuko Sato, the Japanese woman who owned the late Kabosu, the Shiba Inu dog pictured in the famed meme image that Dogecoin was based on. The Cocoro launch was coordinated with Sato's first blog post about the newly adopted 10-year-old rescue pup, and Own the Doge is managing the IP around the canine.

Cocoro quickly surged to a market cap above $80 million Saturday morning, though it has since corrected to $46 million at a price around $0.046 per token. According to a tweet, 75% of the tokens were locked to liquidity pools to facilitate trading, with another 20% going to airdrops for DOG and NEIRO token holders, and 5% left for the DAO reserve.

Pseudonymous Own the Doge CEO Smoke told Decrypt why the team opted to deploy COCORO on Base, the Coinbase-created Ethereum scaler, noting that its earlier DOG token has attracted a substantial number of holders on the network.

"We are big fans of what Base is doing for the ecosystem. They have made it fast and affordable to build on Ethereum at scale," said Smoke. "We have had a strong relationship with them since early last year, we currently have over 1 million DOG holders Base."

Dogecoin (DOGE) was created in 2013 by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer as a joke, and without the permission of Sato. It went on to become one of the most valuable cryptocurrencies in the world, fueling a thriving meme coin industry with millions of varied tokens.

Own the Doge (DOG), on the other hand, was created following the team's acquisition of the IP rights to the original Doge meme photo, launching on Ethereum in 2021. DOG surged in value Saturday following the announcement of the team's Cocoro move, with CoinGecko showing a 25% spike in value for the token.

This isn't the first time that a new coin has dropped based on Sato's more recent adoptions. Last year, after she shared he adoption of a Shiba Inu named Neiro, a flurry of unofficial meme coins were dropped on the market. Cocoro's coordinated token launch with Own the Doge was intended to avoid this situation happening again.

In December, Own the Doge announced that it acquired the Neiro IP license, and its DAO of token holders voted on which token should get the official stamp, with Sato's blessing. An Ethereum-based NEIRO token won the vote, but a contractual agreement with Own the Doge has yet to be finalized as of this writing.

That Neiro token is down nearly 14% on the day after plunging following the Cororo announcement.