Dogecoin Gets First Update Since 2019 in Light of Surging Demand

By Andrew Asmakov

Developers of Dogecoin, a meme-based cryptocurrency, have announced the release of a new update to the protocol. This will help it to scale in light of increased interest in the cryptocurrency, spearheaded by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Dogecoin Core version 1.14.3 is described as a minor version release, but the developers strongly recommend that everyone running the software updates to it.

The cryptocurrency has been making headlines since the start of the year, with the likes of Musk, Kiss frontman Gene Simmons and a number of other celebrities and even former porn stars helping to pump its price to record levels above $0.80 in February.

But the project, which was originally invented as a joke, wasn’t being maintained. Dogecoin’s last update was in November 2019, when Dogecoin Core v. 1.14.2 was rolled out. After that, the project’s development was put on hold.

Dogecoin lead maintainer Ross Nicoll said that, amid the recent surge of interest in the cryptocurrency, Dogecoin had started to experience scaling problems. This made it hard for people to run the blockchain and make transactions. In response, he announced its developers were starting to look into new pull requests to the code, leading to the latest update.

The new release makes it faster for nodes to pass around information about blocks to other nodes. This has been done by removing some integrity checks that were slowing down the process. At the same time, this reduces CPU usage for those running Dogecoin nodes.

Additionally, the new version of the protocol reduces the default time after which transactions cached in the mempool—where pending transactions wait to be added to a block—are expired. In earlier versions, this time was set to 336 hours. This has made the mempool more efficient.

With a market cap just below $6.5 billion, the Shiba Inu-inspired coin is currently the 14th largest cryptocurrency in the world. Not bad for a meme coin.

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