Crypto’s original dog coin is back in vogue.
According to CoinGecko data, Dogecoin’s DOGE token is up 11.6% today, trading around $0.085 at press time. It briefly hit $0.088 before cooling off. The surge comes despite a downturn in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the broader cryptocurrency market.
The biggest factor behind the rally is likely the growing momentum surrounding Dogechain. Marketed as a “Layer 2 for Dogecoin,” Dogechain is an Ethereum-compatible smart contract network developed using the Polygon Edge framework. Users need to bridge DOGE onto the network to access its applications, which has created buying pressure as momentum surrounding its launch builds. When users successfully move DOGE onto Dogechain, they receive a wrapped version of the token called wDOGE.
Dogechain went live earlier this month but has gained increasing attention from the market over the past few days. Many prominent traders have taken to Twitter to comment on the network’s rapid growth today.
As the network now hosts several Uniswap-style automated market makers such as DogeSwap and DogeShrek, users can freely list tokens and trade between them if they are holding wrapped DOGE in their wallets. The project’s website also claims that the network will host NFTs and games. According to data from DEX Screener, Dogechain has seen $15 million of volume in the past 24 hours.
Dogecoin was one of the standout performers of the 2021 bull run, rising from fractions of a cent to $0.73 at its all-time high. Among its most vocal supporters was Elon Musk, who famously used Twitter to endorse the early cryptocurrency on multiple occasions. However, Dogecoin collapsed alongside other dog-themed coins amid a period of market mania in May 2021 and failed to reclaim its highs. Even after the renewed interest in the project, it’s still about 88% down from its peak.