Dogecoin’s Game-Changing Upgrade: What You Need to Know in 2025
Dogecoin—the meme coin that refuses to die—might just get a lifeline. A major network upgrade is brewing, and it could shake up the crypto playground.
Why This Matters Now
With institutional money flooding into Bitcoin and Ethereum, Dogecoin’s ragtag community is hungry for relevance. This upgrade could be its ticket back to the big leagues—or just another hype cycle for bagholders to endure.
The Nuts and Bolts
Details are scarce, but whispers suggest scalability fixes and faster transactions. Because nothing says "moon" like shaving microseconds off a Shiba Inu-themed payment.
The Bottom Line
Will this upgrade make Dogecoin a legitimate asset? Probably not. But in crypto, legitimacy is overrated—just ask the guy who traded his Tesla for a JPEG of a monkey.
Dogecoin is the eighth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, the second largest proof-of-work chain behind Bitcoin, and what many consider the first ever meme coin. Despite its cultural significance, the Dogecoin blockchain has fewer daily active addresses than networks like Bitcoin Cash, Stellar, and Litecoin, per TradingView.
If the proposed soft fork upgrade to the network passes, it could see that figure rise as more capabilities are handed to developers. Jefferson said that DogeOS has already seen “significant interest” in developing on Dogecoin from hundreds of teams, and believes the upgrade will help onboard these developers.
A zero-knowledge proof is a way of proving that something is true without revealing the information directly. As a result, the upgrade WOULD bolster the network’s privacy capabilities. Zero-knowledge rollups would also allow for the creation of Dogecoin layer-2 scaling networks for the first time for the meme coin blockchain.
“Dogecoin will be able to rival smart contract platforms like ethereum [and] Solana,” Jefferson said. “That's a massive shift: From a single-purpose coin to a platform that can support entire DeFi, gaming, and identity ecosystems, all while retaining Dogecoin's simplicity, low fees, and community ethos.”
DogeOS is developing an EVM-compatible layer-2 network, which it refers to as an app layer, for Dogecoin. Without the upgrade, layer-2 networks cannot be created on Dogecoin, and it would be a major stumbling block for the project. But it’s not just DogeOS behind the proposal; even the Dogecoin Foundation is supporting it.
“Dogecoin gaining the ability to integrate with ZK L2s is the kind of interoperability we need to build ecosystem utility, allowing the L1 to focus on being the fastest, best, most fun blockchain and means of exchange for all humanity,” Timothy Stebbing, director of the Dogecoin Foundation, said in a release.
However, this is just the start of the process for potentially upgrading the meme coin network.
As Dogecoin does not have a formal on-chain governance process, the proposal will be passed through a series of contributor technical reviews, community discussions, and testing via GitHub. After this, the upgrade will be deployed on the testnet as security audits commence. Once everyone is happy, Dogecoin miners will be signaled to process the soft fork upgrade.
