Dogecoin is up by more than 21% over the past week while Shiba Inu is up by around 54%.
Popular dog-themed cryptocurrencies Dogecoin and Shiba Inu have surged over the past week mainly due to the chatter around their layer 2 solutions. Dogechain and Shibarium, the L2 solutions for Dogecoin and Shiba Inu, respectively, promise lower fees and faster transactions to the buzzing communities of these two major meme coins.
Dogechain: Dogecoin ‘Layer-2’ for DeFi, NFTs, and Games
Dogechain is a newly-launched blockchain platform that allows users to bridge over Dogecoin and use it for DeFi, NFTs, and more. Despite being marketed as a “layer-2 for Dogecoin,” Dogechain isn’t a true L2 network since it’s not built on top of the meme coin but on the Ethereum blockchain, which itself is looking forward to a historical update dubbed the Merge.
Instead, Dogechain is a bridge that allows traders to convert DOGE to weighed dogecoin (wDOGE) and use tokens, NFTs, and products built on the network. It is based on Polygon Edge, a new and emerging framework for building Ethereum chains, and is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine.
Dogechain uses dogecoin as its base trading token and as payment for fees. The bridge is also set to airdrop its own DC token to users of the platform, its site shows. “The dogechain team is preparing to airdrop millions of $DC tokens to the Dogecoin community,” developers said.
While the project has gained some traction recently, it is not an “official” Dogecoin project. Jens Wiechers, legal and governance president at Dogecoin Foundation, tweeted that neither the foundation nor dogecoin developers are involved in the project.
Shiba Inu’s Upcoming L2 Solution Shibarium to Unlock New Opportunities
Dogecoin’s main competitor Shiba Inu has also announced their upcoming L2 blockchain. Dubbed Shibarium, the network will be designed to provide faster and more scalable transactions. The L2 solution could allow for more innovation and development within the Shiba Inu ecosystem by offering developers tools to build new applications and services.
The official release date for Shibarium is not clear yet, but the L2 could launch by the end of the year. The Unification Foundation, which is behind the development of Shibarium, has confirmed that the L2 solution’s public beta will launch in Q3 2022.
“The public Beta TestNet will allow parties to fully interact with the network, including the validation process,” Maziar Sadri, Product Lead at Unification, said in late June. At the time, he also revealed that the Shibarium private alpha TestNet was live for “a number of weeks” allowing developers to create the relevant tools ahead of the public beta.
Dogecoin and Shiba Inu Surge
The hype around layer 2 solutions for two of the largest meme coins has renewed a wave of interest in the coins, leading to a surge in their prices. Dogecoin, for instance, is up by more than 21% over the past week and by around 33% over the past month.
Dogecoin’s rival Shiba Inu has even performed better. The coin is up by around 54% over the past seven days and by more than 47% over the past 30 days. Notably, both of the coins are down by more than 80% compared to their all-time highs.