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According to BitInfoCharts, the number of Dogecoin transactions on the network has grown more than 60 times from about 20,000 transactions on May 1st to over 1.20 million transactions on May 20th.
60x spike in transactions
The current surge represents a 60x increase in Dogecoin transactions, which is noteworthy primarily due to the launch of Ordinals on the proof-of-work blockchain.
The surge in Dogecoin transactions coincided with the launch of Ordinals on May 10th. Now that Ordinals is on Dogecoin, another proof-of-work blockchain that uses the same consensus style as Bitcoin, users can create a new token based on the DRC-20 system. These tokens are unique assets such as texts, images or videos. It is important to note that users do not need to use smart contracts to create them.
However, despite the exponential increase in the number of transactions, DOGE prices are stable, moving horizontally and relatively unchanged over the past three weeks. The coin is also down 31% from its April 2023 peaks.
Related Reading: Multiple attempts at $0.10 Dogecoin: Will the barrier finally be broken?
Dogecoin is the first meme coin created as a joke and launched in 2013. But over the years, she has gained a significant following and support, including from Elon Musk, a billionaire tech investor.
DOGE, the native currency of Dogecoin, is one of the largest cryptocurrency networks whose market capitalization puts it in the top ten coins.
As of May 22, DOGE has a market capitalization of $10.1 billion and is more valuable than Polygon, an Ethereum sidechain, and Solana, a smart contract platform, according to CoinMarketCap data.
Dogecoin Price May 22 | Source: DOGEUSDT on Binance, TradingView
Ordinal numbers on Dogecoin
The DRC-20 standard is inspired by the more popular ERC-20 standard on Ethereum. DRC-20 compliant tokens on the Dogecoin platform are fungible and transferable.
With these tokens, users can “sign” files by attaching them to the smallest unit of Dogecoin called “shibes”. These unique files represent a variety of assets, including texts, images, videos, apps, and more.
Inscribed files verified by Dogecoin miners and added to the blockchain are unique and comparable to non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
As trackers show, the rise of DRC-20 tokens on Dogecoin explains why there has been a surge in the number of transactions on the network over the past 12 days.
To illustrate, data from BitInfoCharts shows that the number of transactions on the network was 48,500 on May 10. However, the number has steadily increased over the past 12 days, peaking at 1.2 million on May 20.
Given the popularity of NFTs on proof-of-work blockchains such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Dogecoin, the number of transactions on each network will only increase.
Related Reading: Errors found in ordinals protocol as Bitcoin breaks above $30,000
Ordinals, the team behind the BRC-20 standard now being copied to Dogecoin, is looking to expand the use of Bitcoin. In their opinion, the ordinals believe that proof-of-work blockchains provide better security and decentralization, allowing NFTs to flourish.