The Dogecoin blockchain community has recently completed its own version of the “Runestone” airdrop, inspired by the NFT-like giveaway conducted by Bitcoin Ordinals last month. The airdrop concluded on April 2, with a total of 30,272 “Doge Runestone” Doginals distributed to wallets that held at least one Doginal from a specified list of collections provided by Robo AI, the organizer of the airdrop.
Currently, Doge Runestones are being traded at a minimum price of 185 Dogecoin (DOGE), equivalent to approximately $32. According to data from the Ordinals Wallet marketplace, these Runestones have generated a 24-hour trading volume of just over $2,000. The Doge Runestones themselves are identical, resembling a golden rock engraved with the DOGE logo.
This airdrop was a replication of the popular Bitcoin Ordinals-based Runestone airdrop that took place in March. During that event, over 112,000 Runestones were distributed to early adopters of the Bitcoin Ordinals protocol. Bitcoin Ordinals are assets similar to NFTs, consisting of images or documents that are embedded into sats, the smallest unit of Bitcoin.
Dogecoin, being a fork of a fork of Bitcoin, has the ability to utilize Ordinals. The Doginals protocol, introduced by an anonymous developer in February of last year, came about a month after the launch of Bitcoin Ordinals. This protocol also paved the way for the introduction of the DRC-20 token standard in early May 2023, drawing inspiration from Ethereum’s ERC-20 standard and Bitcoin’s BRC-20 standard.
Currently, there are 149 Doginal collections and nearly 68,000 DRC-20 tokens, with a combined market capitalization of $120 million, as reported by Doginal Explorer data. Additionally, the Dogecoin blockchain has even seen the inscription of the 1993 classic shooter game, Doom, as a Doginal. This reference to Doom being playable on unconventional hardware, such as washing machines and toothbrushes, has become a continuing meme within the video game community.
Despite the Doge Runestone airdrop, the price of DOGE has not experienced a significant positive impact. It is currently trading at $0.1718, reflecting a 2% decrease in the past day and a 20% decrease over the week, according to Cointelegraph Markets Pro.