Dogecoin Foundation’s new advisory board includes Ethereum co-founder Buterin and Elon Musk’s representative Birchall

• The Dogecoin Foundation now owns the logo and mark for the cryptocurrency and will maintain it for the community.
• The new advisory board includes Ethereum co-founder Buterin and Elon Musk’s representative Birchall.
• The Foundation was formed in 2014 but disappeared over time.
• New projects around Dogecoin will also be announced in the coming days.

After years of silence, the Dogecoin Foundation is back after six years and its new advisory board includes Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Jared Birchall, who heads Elon Musk’s family office, as advisors.

In an announcement yesterday, the Foundation announced its re-establishment with “renewed focus” to support the ecosystem and community built around the cryptocurrency. The Dogecoin Foundation is a non-profit organization that was first launched in 2014 but had been dissolved over time.

Max Keller, a core developer for the Dogecoin project, will also serve as a technical adviser, while founder Shibetoshi Nakamoto will be the community and memes advisor.

In its announcement, the Foundation said it is not here to “take control” of the Dogecoin Core Wallet project but to accelerate development efforts around the crypto token. The Dogecoin Core Wallet is the official wallet for holding Dogecoin that’s maintained by the foundation.

“We are here to accelerate the development effort by supporting current Dogecoin Core and future Dogecoin Developers to work on a full-time basis through sponsorship, as well as providing a welcome landing for new contributors hoping to help with the project,” the foundation said in its announcement.

It also hopes to raise a three-year budget, which will be used to hire a staff that will look after its day-to-day activities.

While Musk has been a vocal supporter of Dogecoin lately, Buterin had famously donated 50% of the supply of Shiba Inu tokens to a crypto covid relief fund in India earlier this year. The developers of the Shiba Inu cryptocurrency had put 50% of the coin’s supply in a public wallet owned by Buterin, and many saw the donation as Buterin’s way of withdrawing support for meme-based cryptos like Shiba Inu and Dogecoin.

Further, the Foundation also plans to announce new projects on Dogecoin soon. Its website has space for the project roadmap, which it claims is “being drafted” right now and will be announced “shortly”. “The Dogecoin Foundation is also looking to the future of the broader Dogecoin ecosystem, and in coming weeks, will be announcing new projects that will compliment the current Core Wallet to enable faster integration and easier APIs for Financial, Social and Charitable projects wishing to use Dogecoin,” the announcement said.

It’s unclear why the Dogecoin Foundation chose to return at this time, but it could be because the coin has drawn flak from the broader crypto ecosystem. Shiba Inu and Dogecoin have often been accused of reducing the overall industry’s credibility since they were both made as joke coins at first. At the moment, Coinmarketcap ranks the token as one of its top cryptocurrencies with a market capitalization of nearly $40 billion.

The Foundation also announced that it now owns the Dogecoin Logo and mark, and will maintain it for the community, fighting efforts to co-opt the currency. “For many years, the Dogecoin community has continued to think the best of people and hoped that everyone could play nicely with the name and logos. Dogecoin belongs to the people after all,” the foundation said in its post. “However, in recent times, numerous attempts have been made to co-opt the ‘Dogecoin’ brand in various jurisdictions, in ways that would prevent the community and the project itself from using them,” it added.

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