Ross Nicoll’s surprise departure from their role as a core developer of Dogecoin ($DOGE.X) has awakened some discord in the world of memecoins – rivals such as Shiba Inu and Floki are now asking if this is their time to shine.
Nicoll indicated in his resignation letter that this wouldn’t be the end of his relationship with Dogecoin – he indicated that he would remain as an advisor – however, the crypto community is suspicious about Dogecoin’s next phase. Some even expressed their anxiety on Twitter, suggesting people should stop buying the memecoin.
Dogecoin started a new foundation to support its development in August. Its re-establishment came mere months after the crypto “went to the moon” after a retail-driven fervor for the dog-inspired memecoin. A foundational goal of the foundation was to promote Dogecoin’s growth through advocacy, governance, and trademark protection. It also rounded up some high-quality board members – including, most notably, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. However, Dogecoin has struggled to stay above water since the fervor started to wear.
Today, $DOGE.X was trading at $0.13, an 81% decline from its all-time high price of $0.731578 in May 2021.
The downfall of $DOGE.X has given plagiarisms of the popular memecoin a lot of runways to work with. For instance, one of the top 1,000 investors on Binance Smart Chain purchased 140 billion Shiba Inu tokens ($SHIB.X). Shiba Inu, which takes after Dogecoin in many ways, has many technical improvements over its contemporary – it has launched NFTs collections, and its core team reportedly plans to launch its metaverse museum. And even more copies of the Dogecoin copy, Baby Doge Coin ($BABYDOGE.X) and Floki Inu ($FLOKI.X) have aspirations to enter the metaverse with new play-to-earn games.
We’ll have to see just how much these crypto projects can accomplish – after all, many NFT and cryptos promise and fail to execute. However, given the rigor of these meme-loving audiences, there’s a better chance than not that we’ll start seeing results from these inspired communities.
That means that Dogecoin will have to bring it to stay in the game – it can no longer rely on celebrity endorsements from people like Elon Musk. It needs a new shtick.