Welcome back to Block by Block, the podcast where we go deep with the builder shaping the next era of crypto, AI and everything in between. Today we're joined by Jordan Jefferson, the CEO of Doge OS, a project aiming to bring Doge from meme to an app layer. From at my Doge CEO on Twitter to leading the charge on Doge OS, Jordan's been building the Doge ecosystem in the Doge ecosystem with a clear vision. Make Doge usable, accessible, and powerful. Jordan, welcome to the show. Thank you, glad to be here. So Doge is the level of brand awareness that Dogecoin has is incredible. It's probably up there next to brand awareness for Trump, um Musk, and then probably number three is Doge. That's an exaggeration, but really though, like everyone in crypto and outside of crypto knows about Doge and you're building in the Doge ecosystem and have been. You built the Doge wallet. um and now you're building Doge OS and want to get into it and talk all about Doge OS that you guys raise around from Polychain. um But before we get into that, maybe give us a sense of your background and why your background is like the perfect fit for like the lead developer for Doge OS. Yeah, good question. mean, I have been a software engineer my entire life and founder for many, many, years now. um You know, the path that kind of led me to building in the Doge space actually started in the early Bitcoin days. So I was uh actually dropped out of university to build a Bitcoin startup in like 2010, 2011 era. And, um you know, got Bitcoin pilled in the early days by a friend decided to build this business together. And these were like the, you know, the super early peer to peer electronic cash all we really had was the white paper and we were out there, you know, trying to onboard businesses, onboarding our friends to Bitcoin. We would go out for lunch. I was living in Vancouver at the time and we would get restaurants to start accepting Bitcoin. And the next time we went there, we would pay for our lunch in Bitcoin. And so that's kind of where I fell in love with crypto. And when I kind of fully entered the Dogecoin world four years ago, and I have to say, I didn't take Dogecoin seriously in the early days. I didn't get the joke as an early Bitcoin guy, I just didn't get the joke. And so it took me a while. And luckily, my partners on my Doge kind of Doge-pilled me. We entered the Dogecoin space four years ago, built my Doge, which is now the number one Dogecoin wallet or number one Dogecoin mobile app in general. And when we first launched the wallet, I entered the community, started to interact with everyone. That's when I really got Doge-pilled because it kind of gave me those early Bitcoin vibes. People are out there on the streets, you know, tipping their Uber drivers in Doge, going to the restaurant, getting someone to download the wallet, uh you know, their server to download the wallet, then tipping them in Doge and just kind of out there spreading it in this grassroots way that, you know, I was doing, my friends were doing back in the early Bitcoin days. So that's sort of what really made me fall in love with Dogecoin, um brought back those really good early vibes. And um yeah, I mean, that's kind of what led me there. I think, you know, I'm I'm really lucky to have a very aligned, very passionate team who kind of all believe in the mission as well. mean, no one would be here if they didn't love Dogecoin and kind of like believe in everything we're doing, uh know, the people's currency and kind of chasing all these original ideals of how crypto can enrich people's lives, make the world a better place, et cetera. ah I got to say, this is not the easiest way for any of us to make money. It's not like we thought, wow, this is, you let's just commit our lives to Dogecoin and we're all going to get rich. It's really a passion project. of course, if all goes well, the business grows and we're able to ideally create opportunities for more people to build businesses in the Dogecoin ecosystem and so on and so forth, hopefully it works out. But really, we're just a bunch of crazy Doge believers who really want to build something that we actually believe in. Well, I think it's brilliant. mean, you're kind of piggybacking onto a massive community, Not only is it like massive in terms of quantity, but like they're true believers in Dogecoin. And so there's kind of two challenges that I see and I'd love to go into each of these. Dogecoin has a really, really strong market presence and brand recognition as a meme coin. and you're building, you built Doge wallet, is the number one wallet in the space, in the Dogecoin space, but now you're building Doge OS. And so I guess two questions there. uh Tell us about Doge OS, like let's get into the details, like why an app layer for Dogecoin? uh And how do you separate like the brand, going from meme, because it's always going to be there as an overhang, to now, it's like this thing is actually usable and you can build stuff on top of it. And in here are kind of the things that you can build and then getting developers on board. So I think two big questions and maybe we can go into those. For sure, and I might answer the second one first. um I think that basically, and I'll even kind of rephrase a question that I get a lot is, okay, are you adding utility to a meme? Is that sort of, you know, kind of defeating the purpose? You know, generally in the meme coin world, people don't like when you start to talk about utility. It's meant to just be a joke. It's meant to be funny, whatever. um I think we built the wallet with the goal of, let's make it easier to use Dogecoin. Let's give an easy path for people who hear about Dogecoin to download this app and start participating. But the ultimate goal is to spread adoption of Dogecoin and create more use cases for Dogecoin. And so that's happening. mean, the community is out there, as I said, grassroots, spreading Doge for payments. And I think that ultimately Dogecoin is a meme and we're we're definitely not trying to change Dogecoin itself. And that is the beauty of it. It's a joke. We don't take it too seriously. Dogecoin does already have utility and that utility is that it's money. And so I would say, you know, that is fundamentally the utility of Dogecoin. Dogecoin is money. And what we're really trying to do is just create more use cases for that money and more velocity uh of that money. I mean, we want to see Dogecoin use more. We want to see more movement of Dogecoin. We want to develop an economy in and around Dogecoin. And I think that that, you know, doesn't fundamentally change Dogecoin itself, but just kind of furthers the the adoption and um creates more opportunities in the Dogecoin world. to kind of go back to the first part. Okay. Why dojo S what is dojo S? I mean, ultimately it's, you the next step forward for us to just grow the doge ecosystem. As you said, it is the, you know, one of the most recognizable brands in all crypto. is, you know, one of the most recognizable and beloved memes in the history of the entire world. Basically. Um, we think it deserves, you know, an entire ecosystem. We think that there can be more businesses in an around Dogecoin. We think that there can be way more users using Dogecoin. And as much as the original purpose of crypto, if you will, peer-to-peer electronic cash payments, buying stuff, that is growing. That is growing as we speak. The community is out there onboarding businesses. There's great partnerships happening on a pretty impressive global scale. for payments adoption. I also think that right now we're missing a key part of that kind of economy, which is on chain. There isn't really an on chain economy with Dogecoin. And if we want Dogecoin to be the currency of earth, this is the money we all believe in. I think, to be honest, the lowest hanging fruit is uh in the Web3 economy. If we can't get the rest of Web3 sort of using Dogecoin as money, treating Dogecoin as money, how are we going to get some off the street who's never even used crypto before. So what we're trying to do with DogeOS, this app layer, is really create an on-chain ecosystem native to Doge that uses Dogecoin as currency. that enables developers to build experiences around Doge and really creates this on-chain economy. And I'll go a little further into that and say that basically right now, Dogecoin is seen as an asset within Web3 and less so as the money that the Dogecoin community sees it as, because Dogecoin sits mostly on centralized exchanges and it's just traded for speculative purposes. And if you compare to something like Solana, you see almost half of Solana trading is actually decentralized. It's happening on chain and users actually hold Solana in their wallets on chain because there's something to do with it. They might need to, you know, they might need to buy a meme coin. They might need to play a game. They might need to trade for something, whatever it is. They're incentivized to actually, you know, bring that soul off exchange and into their wallets and This is something that we're kind of missing in Dogecoin. Right now, the core community, the true believers, they are holding their Doge in our wallet, which is self-custody or others. um They are sending it to their friends. They're doing real-world payments where they can. But compared to some of these Web3 ecosystems with real on-chain economies, ah it's really small. ah We have an ultimate goal, is just, you know, create more use cases for Dogecoin, create an economy around Dogecoin. And that will kind of naturally encourage people to move coins off exchange into self custody, you know, put that Dogecoin to work. And I think it's really, really important. um I think it's actually, you know, more important than some people would realize for kind of the future of Dogecoin in general. um And it just does so many things. mean, it creates opportunities for the community to now build businesses around Dogecoin because that money is actually kind of accessible. It's there. Users have more things to do. And I think empowering the community is the ultimate goal because it is the biggest community. I mean, it's definitely the biggest meme coin community in history. It's probably one of the biggest communities in all of crypto. And so there's a huge passionate user base that wants to participate. love eat, sleep and breathe Doge. They want to build. want to do this, that, whether it's like creatives, whether they're, you know, podcasters, whether they're artists, whether they're developers, gamers, anything, there's such a passion to participate. And if we sort of, you know, put the building blocks there and kind of get the money moving and get opportunities being created, I think that's how we really kind of harness this huge community to. overall move Dogecoin forward. that's a kind of a philosophical answer behind what it is and what we're doing. I think you hit on really one of the pain points that I experienced. Maybe I could share just my Doge experience real quick. I'm not on centralized exchanges at all, other than for an off-ramp, um if I have to pay bills or whatever. um I wanted to buy Doge, and I could not figure out how to buy Doge. I didn't want to buy it on a centralized exchange, and so I just ended up not buying any. um and I couldn't figure out how to buy it on a DEX and I did all the research and maybe it's just me, but I couldn't figure it out. And so I ended up just not participating. And this was years ago. um There's probably a DEX now that has some doge or some rap doge or something like that, but at the time there wasn't. um I didn't want to buy it on a centralized exchange. And so you bring up one of the pain points and it actually makes a ton of sense, right? know, Doge needs to be on chain. But for it to be on chain, for that to make sense, there needs to be some applications that it can be an asset that you could participate in. Let's talk about Doge OS. Like how will Doge OS enable, I guess, usefulness and utility, not utility, I guess, How Dogecoin can be used as an asset to participate in more applications? How can DogeOS enable that? Absolutely. So, you know, on a very basic level, because we haven't really said, okay, literally, what is it? You know, we call it the app layer. mean, essentially, we've made, you know, an EVM execution layer that's native to Doge and, you know, uses Dogecoin for gas and um The reason we kind of started with EVM compatibility is because it's by far the largest pool of developers, resources, et cetera, to build. And our goal is let's kind of bootstrap this Dogecoin ecosystem. We want to make it as easy as humanly possible. So step one, we make it really easy for developers to now build native experiences using Dogecoin, access that Doge, and it's really easy for users to start participating. um What does this enable? So, you know, in theory, it enables anything, right? It's a permissionless network. Anyone can build anything. We don't have a say. Nobody has a say, just like Dogecoin itself. ah But there's certainly, you know, we certainly have ideas around what we'd like to see, the stuff we've dreamed of for years. ah And there's certainly ideas where we go out and we look for builders like, is there anyone who's building this thing we think would be awesome for Dogecoin? Let's go find them, Doge, pill them, try to get them onto DogeOS. So what are those things? mean, on the one hand, it might not be the most exciting to uh a user, but it's really important, as we just kind of touched on, to have some sort of native Doge DeFi. ah Without decentralized solutions, look, someone like yourself, wouldn't even buy Doge. And so I think that's really important. um It's also really important for the people in general to kind of like own the economy, the infrastructure, the exchanges um instead of, you know, maybe it's just owned by a few corporations right now. I mean, a few big companies basically hold, you know, the large majority of Dogecoin. Now they're doing it on behalf of users, these large exchanges, but you know, they're kind of reaping all the profits from Dogecoin trading that you know, perhaps could actually be in the hands of the people. So I think DeFi is really important and you know, there's little things that Doge people don't have access to that um people do across the rest of crypto, like basic borrowing and lending. And uh that can actually be a kind of important sometimes when maybe you have a bill to pay and you're like, I guess I'm going to sell my Dogecoin. Like, darn, I need to sell a bunch of it to pay this. Well, actually, you could probably take a really cheap loan against that Doge, pay your bill in US dollars, and keep holding. And there's little things like that that the community hasn't had easy access to that DeFi on Doge will enable. ah But beyond that, there's more what I would see as more exciting, fun stuff to the average user and stuff that I think is important for kind of onboarding, you know, the next millions, billions to crypto. um I'll, you know, I'll step back and say that Dogecoin itself has kind of been one of the main driving forces to onboard new people to crypto for, you know, at least five years, if not kind of since the beginning. Mm-hmm. so we have this group of people who are continuously, continuously entering the crypto space via Dogecoin. And a lot of these people, probably millions of them, it's the only crypto they've ever bought or held. So the first thing where they're like, okay, that's funny. Ooh, I like that cute dog. Like maybe I'll just get some. It's kind of hilarious. And we need stuff that like actually takes these people to the next step. So now maybe they're holding Dogecoin. They're really curious. What do they do next? And I think the answer to that is like really uh fun, accessible stuff and experiences that are more web too so that any normal user, if you will, ah can kind of understand them without having to dive deep into crypto understanding. examples of that. uh think like... really fun, simple, casual gaming, wacky viral stuff, uh know, something really fun that you can just jump in and play and maybe you earn rewards in Dogecoin. Not these, you know, crypto games that have kind of been built around like a token and all this stuff where it's sort of like, you know, play to earn, pay to win, blah, blah, blah. I think that's not necessarily accessible, but... you know, imagine like a, you know, really fun arcade full of Doge games where you can just play like any other game, but maybe you start to earn some Doge rewards and you're like, Ooh, this is kind of cool. I think stuff like that is, is really exciting from uh a consumer perspective. And I think ultimately, you know, the goal here is let's take this amazing momentum that Dogecoin has in this huge evangelist community. And how do we like better convert all these newcomers into, you know, true believers like ourselves? How do we. go from like, they heard about Dogecoin, okay, maybe they bought some Dogecoin, and now they're actually like doing something with it and being like, ooh, this is really fun. So ah I think it's kind of important to just keep in mind like what Dogecoin is. It's a joke, okay? ah We can't take it too seriously. Obviously, we're building some serious tech, we're, you a lot of serious people working on serious things, but the point is it's a joke, it's fun. And so I think the most important thing is like, just building fun experiences so that people who were attracted to Dogecoin because it's fun, funny, silly, whatever, ah they can just start having fun with it and keep the vibe going. And so I'm just excited to see what people build, but we're really out there trying to find the most different, wacky, creative, silly, interesting people um who they want to build something different, maybe not just like, hey, I saw this app worked on this other blockchain. Like we should just launch this too on Doge and maybe I'll make some money. um That's not super exciting to me. I think what's exciting is like, let's continue being different. Doge is different. It's kind of a counterculture movement in web three. ah Let's just try to build a bunch of different stuff and have like a really special Doge ecosystem. You know, I'm really aligned with that vision. You know, having led growth at a couple layer ones, the trend in the past was, you you start up a layer one and then you do business development deals with other applications on other layer ones. And then you get an instance on yours. But what ends up happening is uh liquidity gets fragmented. There's a lot of brand confusion because Aave is on that. Now Aave is on this other thing too. um And it turns out that, you know, Aave is not supporting the one on the new chain very well. We're building, helping to build a community on there. And so it's like, that didn't work out too well. And then there's the whole grants meta thing where people are just giving away free money to incentivize developers to, you know, deploy their app on yours, on your layer one. I think the real differentiator, and I think where Dojo S could really, really win is like native applications. that are really unique to Doge OS, into the Doge ecosystem. um And um I think changing the framing from utility, m know, Dogecoin is fun. It's a meme. that's what it's, it is. It's fun. And the word utility is really off-putting, but what if we reframed it as like, make Dogecoin productive? um Because, I like that word because there are Dogecoin whales that are sitting on a lot of Dogecoin, but it's not like doing anything for them. And so my guess is a lot of them probably want to have their assets be productive on their behalf while they're sleeping. And so I can see lots of yield opportunities. And that's like where DeFi comes in, like very native, um bespoke. DeFi just for Dogecoin on DogeOS. I think that could be really unique. um I'm reminded of another project that I'll, you if you're interested, I'll introduce you to them. uh It's a project called More Markets where they're actually doing the same thing for, um they're building like a very native kind of yield bearing kind of DeFi for XRP. I don't know anything about Ripple, but what I do know is that there are people that own Ripple and the Ripple is doing nothing for them or their XRP is doing nothing. And um I've known XRP whales that are looking at the Ethereum ecosystem with envy because they're participating in DeFi, they're earning yield, but there's nothing like that on XRP. m so they're doing this company, this project is doing that for XRP and I bet they'd be interested in talking with you and building something native and very unique for Dogecoin holders. on Dojo S. Absolutely, and this uh is probably the most serious thing that we're focused on actually. think creating a yield opportunity for Doge, kind of for the first time. mean, there's really no yield anywhere on centralized exchange, in DeFi. uh There might be a couple of small opportunities out there, but there's nothing accessible where you can just basically put your Doge in a savings account and now it's earning more Doge. And so I think that's like, you know, the most fundamental value proposition that we can give any Dogecoin holder is saying, Hey, here's like a really easy, really safe way that you can now turn your Doge into more Doge. When you think about Dogecoin, there is inflation, right? It's not a supply cap like Bitcoin. It's a very small amount of inflation and it's diminishing towards zero forever. So it's like, let's say 2%, 3 % right now and it's kind of slowly dropping. We see this as a good thing. um We see because Dogecoin is money, a little bit of inflation encourages you to spend it. Bitcoin is more kind of this asset now, digital gold. You're not encouraged to spend it. You're just kind of hoarding it. We say, okay, this is great. It's kind of like the best form of money. It's less inflation than fiat, but it still has some inflation. But now imagine that you can actually beat that inflation by depositing your Doge into some sort of savings. And now it's earning, let's say, three, four, five, six, maybe even more percent every year. um I think that fundamentally uh improves the overall investability of Doge in the first place. um We always tell people, and a lot of the prominent voices in the community tell people, look, the point is not to make money here. We don't tell people, buy Dogecoin. because you're going to get rich. Reality is that already happened, right? It went from point zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, however many zeros, you know, all the way to 70 cents. uh Some people, you know, definitely made a lot of money there. It's not going to go up, you know, like a million times at this point. That's just kind of impossible or maybe over the next thousand years or something. um So we say, look, hold, like, buy Dogecoin and use it, do it for fun, you know, participate. And, you know, if it goes up, that's awesome. But ultimately, as much as that's kind of the philosophy we all believe, um you're not going to stop people, including ourselves, from hoping the price goes up if you hold a bunch of Dogecoin. I mean, that's just human nature. Of course, we want the price to go up if we're holding this like we would with anything else. So if we can introduce a basic earning opportunity that sort of beats the inflation, um I think that like really makes it far better asset to like long-term hold. um So I'm definitely excited about that. And, you know, certainly would appreciate any intros to teams doing similar things. uh It is kind of a, you know, it's similar. Obviously it's very different than Ripple, you know, as a currency, as a technology and all that, but in the same way that it's like a OG community with a lot of true believers from a long time ago who've been holding for a very long time, but haven't really had anything uh to do with it. um We're in a similar position. think, know, Dogecoin's probably used a little more peer to peer on chain and all that. um But there just hasn't been this kind of like ecosystem developed around it, apps, developers, all that. So I think that's a good comparison. Yeah, and I'm not making any value judgments. I'm not a user or owner of XRP or I don't know anything about Ripple. m But I do know that there's like a lot of XRP holders. They're not participating in DeFi because there is no DeFi. um But you're right, mean, the community is like very diehard, et cetera. And it's not my personal flavor, but there's a lot of opportunity there. Project More Markets, and I'll introduce you after the call. m They're kind of filling a need. um And I can see both of you guys working at Dojo S working with More Markets. know, oh, I had a thought that it just totally escaped me. Oh, yeah. I was talking with Kane Warwick from Infinex. um And he uses this phrase called lazy whales. um And lazy whales is to describe like kind of OG community members in these like very kind of, know, or OG assets. uh And you know, Dogecoin is one of those, you know, of course there are Bitcoin whales. um There's XRP whales, there's uh Cardano whales. And they're not doing anything productive with the assets that they own, but they own a ton and they're just kind of sitting on it. um But it really points to a need that, you know, bet a bunch of them like would like to have their assets work on their behalf and be productive. And so I think there's just a huge opportunity to harness this movement, the Dogecoin movement, and give them an opportunity to put their assets to use. Which brings me to another question. How do you balance, like, know, Dogecoin is a fun meme and having it be productive on their behalf? How do you work, I guess how do you balance that messaging? That's a great question. And I like the term lazy whales. think that's, it kind of applies to everyone. Everyone's a bit lazy. And it's sort of why, as much as we could like preach why, hey, you should do this, you should do that. That's only going to capture so many people to do something, whether it's to like bring your coin off exchange, whether it's to put it to work. I think what we really need to do is you kind of just make it, um you make it so compelling that people just naturally do it. I think that's like the biggest challenge. It's probably the challenge of our industry as a whole. Instead of saying like, why should you use Bitcoin? Why should you not trust banks? Why is this better? You kind of have to create a situation where it's like so easy, it's so accessible, and the value proposition is like obvious that someone kind of takes that step to do it. And so, yeah, how do we kind of balance that alongside like the fun and, um you know, messaging of Doge? ah It's a really good question. um Because I think I touched on this earlier, like if we sort of like lose the joke, if we kind of forget, ah you know, why we're all here and why we love Doge in the first place. then I think it starts to get kind of lame and it might even become cringe and people will go like, okay, like these guys are way too serious. They don't get it. They don't get the joke. I think that's tough. But I would say, how can we balance like this sort of, we're trying to do some real financial stuff and create these opportunities in Dogecoin. But we got to remember that it's just fun and it's a joke and the whole point was kind of to make fun of crypto and the whole industry in the first place. um I would say, you know, what is the most funny thing possible? What is the most ironic thing possible? There's the, you know, the Elon quote, the most ironic outcome is the most likely. ah I think the most fun and ironic thing is that, you know, we sort of overthrow the financial system with Dogecoin. We create a new financial system for the people that we actually, you know, fundamentally change the fabric of society with this thing that was just a joke. So I think kind of everything we're doing uh can still fit properly within this Dogecoin narrative. uh I think it's really ironic if this funny dog money uh actually changes the world. If we actually create, you know, like basically an on chain bank, the people's bank where you're actually getting more interest than your savings account in a traditional bank. I think that's really funny and fun and still kind of aligns with the Doge narrative. So I think as long as we kind of keep those principles in mind and don't take ourselves too seriously, mean, which to be honest, it's not hard to not take yourself too seriously when you wake up and you're like, I literally go to work every day to like build Dogecoin stuff. I mean, it's like not lost on anyone that this is ridiculous. like, we're very lucky that we can do this and how silly is it? And how did we get here? You know, I walk everywhere. just wear Dogecoin shirts and I get comments on the street. It's easy to remember that like this is funny and ridiculous. So I think, yeah, we just try to keep that that spirit alive and, you know, not fall into the trap of, hey, this is just like another crypto business and let's look at what everyone else is doing and do the same thing. I think we really just have to remember. Hey, it's like blank slate. It's Dogecoin. We can do whatever we want. Community has crazy ideas, let's listen to them, let's build what the people want. We don't have to kind of follow the playbook. I think the fundamental principle in everything you just shared is the irony. What is the irony behind this thing? Because asking that question brings you back to the first principles of why Dogecoin was created. It'd be hilarious if Dogecoin took over the financial system or your savings interest rate is higher on Dogecoin than some bank. Or you're able to use your Dogecoin as collateral to buy a house or something. Like, or there is down payment to buy a house and get a loan or get a mortgage. Like that's hilarious. And all of that like points to some level of irony. And I love that because that keeps the spirit alive and also satisfies this idea that Dogecoin can actually do something for you. And you know, maybe not use the word utility because that there's kind of baggage there. um But it could definitely do something for you and make your life better. Like something could be fun and a meme and also make your life better. And I think that there's there's there's something special in that. And being able to harness the Dogecoin community to satisfy that mission is you've got like all the right ingredients. That's that's pretty awesome. Absolutely. think you know fun is utility in and of itself right and uh Especially when you're talking about money, you know, it's something that stresses people out it's often you know, there's often nothing fun about money for your average person, right? it's just like a Long-term lifelong financial stressor all this kind of thing if you can make money fun inherently fun I got kind of brightens everybody's lives a little bit um regardless of what you're doing with it. So um Yeah I think it's awesome. I think it's super fun. So you guys, let's talk about like the, back in May, um you guys raised uh some capital from a bunch of angels that participated, but also from Polychain Capital. Tell me kind of like, you know, all of these angels that participated and Polychain, like what did they, like I guess what vision did they see that made them write the check? So that's a really great question. You know, we've been really lucky. We've been, you know, originally when we built the wallet, we were funded by a small group of angels who really, you know, kind of long-term just believed in Dogecoin. You know, they weren't super worried about, you guys going to make a bunch of money tomorrow or anything like that? Which we don't. I mean, we built a free self custody wallet. It's not, you know, making anybody rich. ah But they kind of believed in Dogecoin long-term. And then as we started to kind of build DogeOS and we just needed more resources, you know, we have a ton of really talented people. working on this. We had to go out and get some more money. And it's interesting because, you know, most investors were not looking at the Dogecoin space for opportunities. And, you know, most people probably in the whole industry don't realize that There's been a lot going on in Dogecoin over the last few years. ah Everyone knows about Dogecoin. People don't necessarily realize that there's teams building, not just us. There's ah people who've been dedicating their lives to Dogecoin for a long time. there's a lot of education going out there and kind of showing people, hey, there's all this stuff going on. There's a lot of opportunities in Doge. ah you know, to answer your question, like what did they see as the, as the potential here? Uh, it's actually really cool. So I think a lot of the feedback I got, um, kind of like speaking to investors about this was that they were really impressed that, um, you know, there, there was a team that had just kind of committed to one vision for so many years and was like still executing on that vision and really passionately believed in it. I think a lot of the times in our industry, uh, you know, people are kind of chasing whatever the hot meta is, whatever the next opportunity is right now. Okay. It's meme coins. Like we're launching a meme coin. Okay. Now it's this we're building this, and kind of just trying to chase the narrative of like, what's making the most money or what do investors want to see? And we came in like, no, look, we've been building for almost four years now. This has kind of been a long-term vision and we're just going to keep going forward and committing, uh, you know, to doge coin and to seeing this through. And I think just like that alone. um, went a really long way with investors. They were kind of impressed that like, okay, wow, this is like, you know, we don't meet a lot of teams who are on their like fourth year of building out this vision and now they're coming to us to kind of raise money. Uh, so that was, yeah, that was some of the feedback I got. What, do they really see as like the potential here? I think, I think it's somewhat obvious. I mean, Dogecoin has millions or tens of millions of holders. is this huge, massive community. And it is underserved. You know, there are not enough people doing things for this amazing community of holders. So I think they just thought, wow, like if, you know, if anyone's going to do it, it's, you know, it be these guys. They're going to help unlock all this Doge liquidity. They're going to help activate, you know, the Doge army. That's the thing I say a lot. mean, the Doge army is massive, but most of them are asleep. I mean, they're just kind of, you know, maybe they got into Dogecoin five years ago, maybe 10 years ago, maybe three years ago. But there's not like enough that kind of like gets them out of bed to open their wallet and do something with Dogecoin. So, you know, we're just trying to like help create that movement to like kind of activate the Doge army to empower the kind of like Doge community evangelists to like have more ammo to go out there and say like, Hey man, this is why you should use Dogecoin or hey, try this out or, that kind of thing. Um, so yeah, we basically just found a bunch of, you know, really aligned investors who thought, yeah, like we love Dogecoin. First of all, I mean, if they were like, no, Dogecoin stupid, then, you know, and I'm trying to convince them like that's not, you know, I'm not going to spend my time convincing you otherwise. We found investors who kind of loved Dogecoin already believed in Dogecoin thought like, okay, here's, know, a really convicted, like high integrity team that is, you know, truly committed to Dogecoin and has kind of shown that it's not like, we're not here as like some sort of like exploit the community cash grab situation. uh As I mentioned, there's a lot of easier ways to make money in crypto. uh yeah, I'm really grateful that we kind of, you know, not only do we get like, you know, some really, really great VCs like Polychain who, um you know, people are like to kind of roll their eyes about VCs in the space, but uh there's definitely some good ones out there who bring, you know, a ton of support, strategic value and actually have, you know, similar long-term visions of like creating something real. And, you know, those are the investors we took on the ones that are not like, Hey, we're looking to like buy a token that we can dump in a year and make money. Uh, we're looking at the ones that just kind of believe, look, if you build something of real value, then we'll probably all make money in the end. And that's what we care about. Um, those are the kinds of investors we found. then, you know, very grateful to have, you know, a ton of angel investors, kind of from all corners of the crypto industry who just believed in Dogecoin and want to support what we're doing. And I think that's the cool thing about Doge is that like, No matter what you do in crypto, no matter what your favorite coin is, whether you're part of some other ecosystem, you might maybe even like a famous person in some other ecosystem. ah Many of these people still love Dogecoin. Dogecoin is OG. uh know, it's many of the people I talked to, some of our investors, some of our builders, some of our partners, it's the first currency they ever bought, right? And maybe it's the first thing that ever like made them a bit of money in crypto too. And they were like, wow, this is hilarious. I, you know, bought this funny thing as a joke and it and I made this money and then I was like, wow, crypto is really cool. So we just kind of went out, found those people and we were like, hey, yeah, we're just kind of continuing. You know, we're trying to do our part in the broader community of Dogecoin to just kind of move things forward. And yeah, we found a lot of believers. And that makes sense. mean, it's you have so many things going for you. mean, it's Dogecoin communities large, very loyal. And you brought something up that I didn't realize until this call um that Dogecoin is like it's either, you know, for someone that's new to crypto, they either buy Bitcoin or Dogecoin um and then maybe ETH or Sol later. And so it's like the it's almost like the on ramp. to crypto is like Dogecoin and that's a pretty unique uh position to hold. And there's some way to harness that. um And I didn't realize it until you mentioned it, which is really pretty special. um So you mentioned that DogeOS, it's EVM compatible. So if I'm a developer and I want to... uh I have an idea and I want to build on Dojo S. What steps do I take? So. We're about to launch um the full documentation, developer resources, and all this stuff any day now, maybe by the time this airs. And that'll make it really easy to jump in and get started. But in the meantime, because we've built this in a way that is fully EVM equivalent, um if you already know how to oh build for any EVM chain, then you already know how to build for your Dojo S2. And so we're working on resources to help new developers and that kind of thing. But the ones who know what they're doing can start building immediately. um Follow us on X, reach out. We've got a Builders Chat on Telegram. There's other builders in there. can chat, collab, get help. And we're going to be publishing the full Testnet resources and all that uh any day now as well. Yeah. And I know you want to open up creativity for developers to use, harness, excuse me, harness their own creativity to build whatever. um But you have some insight into, oh here are some key areas where um there is like an unserved need that for which an application in Doge OS would really fill. Do you have like a wish list of applications you'd like to see on Dojo S that you could encourage developers to build? So definitely. um I think it's, know, and like, why do we have a wishlist? Because like, we've wanted to build these things since day one. And we've even, you know, maybe dabbled in trying to do some of these things within the wallet over the years. again, without sort of like smart contracts on Doge, it's been hard because, you know, we don't want to build like centralized stuff that just like somehow uses Doge and like you take Doge into custody and all that, right? We We want to do things the right way. So yeah, we have a wish list. I can give like some examples or like the kind of high level areas, but I'll maybe give like one really, really big one. And I don't know, I don't know exactly. I don't have a blueprint to give someone say, Hey, this is, this is the killer app. But I know kind of the things that I believe are, you know, a big opportunity. And I think would be really cool. And so if you look at the early days of Dogecoin and still today, it was a tipping currency. It kind of blew up initially on Reddit. There was a tip bot. People could tip each other Doge. And this was a way that it started to really spread in the early days. When we launched our wallet, we created a similar thing for Twitter, now X, so that you could tip Doge in tweets and comments and kind of send Doge. And that's still happening on a daily basis. And so I look at that, and I kind of look at the... emergence of social fi over the years in crypto. And there's been a lot of like really interesting experiments in social fi. And if you don't know what social fi means, mean, essentially, you know, combining social, whatever, I guess, usually it's like social media. um And finance, in this case, it's more like, you know, let's make a crypto native social media or some sort of, you know, social experience that uh, you know, uses currency assets in some way. And I think Dogecoin is actually like the best position to do that, both from a community perspective and because its identity is so intertwined with, I mean, like tipping on Reddit or Twitter, like that is social fi. That's kind of like the beginnings of social fi. And so I think like creating the next great or like the first, you know, super massive social fi is one of the biggest opportunities in all of crypto right now. I think probably the closest, most successful thing would be something like Farcaster. If you look before that, mean, there's been things that kind of blew up for a bit like FriendTech. These type of things are like touching on this social-fi opportunity. I think like it's kind of in Dogecoin's identity. It's this tipping currency. We used to have a kind of social-fi implementation in our wallet where... You basically had to pay to post memes, but then people would tip you if your memes were really good. And it actually created this flywheel where if you posted really great content, you always made a little bit more money than you spent to post it. And we were just experimenting around, can we use Dogecoin to actually increase the quality of a social media platform? And this was a really cool experiment. Unfortunately, we had to shut it down because Apple basically told us, you can't do this in the app store. you know, again, without, without like decentralized building capabilities on Doge, um, you know, we were somewhat limited in how we did this thing. And, in the end, you know, they, they weren't really happy with, uh, this being in the app store and not using, you know, fake tokens that you purchased through the app store and actually using Dogecoin. So we basically proved out that there was potential here and, um I personally haven't seen something ever executed like that. That was so sustainable. mean, on average, for as long as this ran, everybody who paid like a little bit of Doge to post something, um, the majority actually made more back and the quality of content was like getting better and better and better. And we were like, wow, we've really got this incredible flywheel. So it was like a long winded story to say that I think, you know, something that like harnesses Doge's like original kind of like identity or appeal. as this like tipping currency of the internet um on social media and kind of just like makes it even more fun um opportunities to reward people, encouraging people to tip Doge to which kind of onboards new users all the time. I think that's really cool. mean, I would absolutely encourage anyone who thinks they've got, you know, a cool idea there to come, you know, tried in the Dogecoin world. um Beyond that, I mean, we talked about all the kind of financial stuff. ah What else do I see people building or like kind of on the wish list? uh You know, I'm a, I'm a gamer at heart and I just think like Doge is so fun and it's just this awesome brand and uh meme. And I just want to see like more Doge games, whether it's like something like super like crypto focused using Dogecoin or whether it's just like a fun game that kind of uses the Doge meme in an awesome way. I think there's like a ton of room for creativity. And, you know, again, I would say like, you know, think about the fun first and like money second. I think that's the biggest flaw of like, you know, gaming and crypto is that it's all, you know, wrapped around a token. um I think like, focus on the fun and the rest will follow and just try to build some like cool wacky stuff. If you delight the Dogecoin community, you've got millions and millions and millions of people who will share whatever you've built, right? And so if you just do that, um the rest will fall into place. So I guess like, yeah, my wishlist is just like fun stuff, creative stuff. And then stuff that can help like, you know, all of us take over the world and empower one another through, you know, through Dogecoin. You know what, I have two things. uh So the first one is, I'm not sure if you're aware, but uh Apple lost the lawsuit to Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite. And so now you can actually have commerce outside of the Apple Store and not have to use Apple, the rails that they kind of enforce. So there might be an opportunity there uh if you revisit that. um The second thing is I wish we did this more in crypto and it's kind of hard to do because of uh privacy and kind of the ethos around privacy. But when I think of Dogecoin holders, I wonder what the segments look like. And my guess is probably 80 % of Dogecoin holders are these large whales or entities, Like centralized exchanges that just hold a lot of Doge. um And then like the 20 % are just like, you know, medium to small kind of holders that some of whom will care about fun, but probably most to be honest, probably just want to make more money. And so I wonder, you know, as you think about your, your, the customer segments of Dogecoin holders, like what, what they look like and kind of what their needs are, and then basing the kind of like the applications that are built on Dojo has to meet those needs. um But that's really hard to do in crypto. But that's like, that would be such an, a more optimal approach. And I, and I see this all the time. And you know, with other, other projects, right? It's like, just don't know enough about our users. And, but it's really, really hard to like actually figure that out because it's crypto. um And, and to do like customer surveys on who your old holders are is actually kind of a challenge. Anyway, that's just kind of an aside, but what you said kind of made me think of that. So I have an interesting point about that. I was talking to a friend yesterday, actually, ah who works at one of the largest exchanges. And he was telling me that, you know, they also are trying to look at the demographics of all the Dogecoin holders on their exchange. And he said it was quite surprising that they don't seem to fit like one archetype or one bucket like many other um holders or many other like segments that they've analyzed of their user base. He was like, it's actually kind of like anyone and everyone and they don't seem to like fit one mold. I think that is like the incredible thing about Doge Point. It's, you know, it's very like decentralized in the sense that so many people of different, you know, ages from different countries, totally different demographics, like have bought Doge over the years. And it's like really spread amongst like all sorts of different people. So, um You know, in one way it's like really amazing. And the other way, like you said, it's maybe it's kind of a challenge, right? Because you don't just have like one clear user to, to market to. But I think to your point, like most people want to make money. so, you know, achieving that. Um, and I think there's, there's great opportunities there because it's like, okay, sure. You could maybe make money trading meme coins on Solana, but most likely you're actually going to lose money. And that's definitely not something accessible to a new user. So. Can we look in the Dogecoin world? How can we create opportunities that people could make money? But maybe it's not like either like lose everything or get rich overnight. Maybe we can create opportunities that are like a little more accessible and sustainable um for these, you know, these kinds of people. And then on the other hand, I think it's just like, everyone loves to have fun, right? If you make something that's just so much fun and you start to see everyone's doing it and you hear about it a lot and your friends are sharing it, like you're probably going to want to participate too. So I think that's something that appeals to everyone, even when they're like completely different demographics. But the one thing I can say from our experience, you know, running this wallet, having, you know, hundreds of thousands of users using it, uh, of different demographics, like the common thread is definitely people new to crypto. Like you said, Dogecoin is like this onboarding thing for new people into crypto. so We really have to just remember, I mean, anyone building in the Dogecoin world should really remember that you have to build like an accessible experience that like a normal consumer can use. You you need to build something that anyone like your, your grandma could, if she uses an iPhone and she already can figure out another app, well, she should be able to figure out this app too. and I think that's really, really important. You know, we're not building for like the most hardcore, like crypto DJ and DeFi expert, that kind of thing. mean, It's great if like those people come too, but we're really building for someone who's like, okay, like Dogecoin, that's cool. Now I've got some Dogecoin, now what? Yeah, I love that. And I'm seeing more and more projects em that view complexity as the enemy. And they're trying to make their applications and their uh customer journeys uh designed for humans. And I really, really love that because it shows that we're maturing as a space. It used to be, as I've worked with really technical founders, that they embraced complexity and they used jargon in their language. uh as if that was like a cool thing and impressive. It's actually not impressive, it's just confusing and it's off-putting and it actually is a big barrier to adoption. But if we make things more accessible and easy, that's actually what gets more adoption and people using our applications and products. um And so I love that you're taking that approach also. Okay, two final questions before we close. I see on the website there's an early access button. uh What stage is DogeOS right now? Are you guys ready to onboard developers? You mentioned you're developing resources that you'll be publishing soon. um What stage is the chain on in right now? Yeah, so the final, basically the final version of the test net is gonna go live any day now. And that is like gonna be basically the same as when the main net launches in the coming months. And so, yeah, I mean, there's been a long time, a lot of people working on it on the protocol infrastructure side. We are almost done. So any day now, it's going to be kind of like wide open for developers to start playing around on the test net and building. You know, there's, uh, you know, th there's other work that we're working on before kind of the final launch, but it's not on the kind of protocol side. It's, uh, you know, updates to our wallet to now support the fact that you can, you know, use daps on Doge and all this kind of thing. Um, and other go to market stuff, like more resources for builders, developers, making it super easy to launch a Doge app. Um, I think the, cool thing about Dogecoin is that the community is like really passionate about participating. You have people in the Doge community that they're not developers, but they're like, how can I contribute to like core development? They're like, how do I get on GitHub and like contribute? And so maybe they're like, oh, it turns out there's a need for like translations or something. And they're like, okay, I'll do that. And I really want to make sure we like do everything we can to help all these people who want to build, but maybe they're not like a classic developer. um They have a way to like build something in the Dogecoin world. So. We're trying to put a ton of resources together for everything from like, okay, vibe coding of Dogecoin apps to maybe you're a developer, but you're not a designer and you're building something. So we're putting out design resources so you can like, you know, use these building blocks to make it look really cool, even though maybe you weren't a designer, all sorts of little things like that, that we're still working on. But um yeah, from a dev perspective, um all the info is going to be on the website any day now, you're to be able to build. um It's open permissionless, we're not gating access, we're not choosing who can build or anything like that. That's definitely not the Dogecoin spirit. Okay, final question. So if Elon came to you and said, hey, I want Doge OS integrated deeply into X, what's your response? And are you guys ready for that kind of scale? I mean, that's a great question. I mean, the response would be like, let's go. ah Absolutely. um We are ready for that kind of scale. I would say, yes, like what we're so we're not necessarily building Dojo as to scale Dogecoin itself, but it does scale Dogecoin itself. I mean, we're trying to scale it in sort of like capabilities, right? That's kind of the core mission. But the reality is, you know, how do we scale the Dogecoin blockchain to be able to support the entire world? submission. And I think, you know, most people agree that it's probably going to scale through roll ups through like layer twos, like we've built. And so that's, you know, we, we do actually achieve like a pretty remarkable scale. Uh, I had, you know, I had someone say to me recently, but you know, can you do the entire throughput of like Visa and MasterCard today? And I was like, not quite, but, and we're not quite there yet. And even if, you know, Elon wants to integrate this in X tomorrow, I don't think we're looking at, you know, like hundreds of thousands of transactions per second and everyone in the world using it day one. um And we absolutely will be there uh by the time that happens as well. So to answer that question, yes, I mean, we're ready for that scale. We've got such incredible people building this thing um that it is world-class tech. I mean, it is Doge. It's a joke. It's funny. But Um, you know, we're also pretty serious about making sure we build, you know, really robust technology, making sure we keep, you know, the principles of decentralization, everything that's important. Um, making sure what we're doing is actually good for Dogecoin itself. It's not like detracted from Dogecoin. It's actually, you know, should make, uh, Dogecoin better and bigger and all of that. Um, but yeah, I mean, I would tell them, let's do it. I mean, uh, I think there's a ton of really fun. really incredible stuff that X could do if they went super crypto native. And I think a lot of that stuff could be actually fundamentally world changing. Now, I don't know what their plans are. I think all we try to do is build towards these visions that we believe in. And whether it's X or Elon or anyone else, my hope is they look at it and they go, that aligns with what I believe. Maybe we could. use that, guess. And em yeah, I mean, I'm a big believer in like, you know, self custody and kind of like empowering people through creating this, you know, these new financial rails, this new financial system. uh I feel like that could, you know, very much align with the long term views of X as well. But we'll have to see. Yeah. Well, Jordan, thank you so much for spending some time with us. You guys are doing something really, really unique in a very unique niche, very large market with Dogecoin holders in the tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions at this point, loyal. And you guys are building the operating system on which uh applications can be built to take advantage of Dogecoin, but maintain the fun. I'm super excited for you guys and excited to see what you guys will do in the next couple of months as you guys march towards main net. I appreciate it. This has been a lot of fun and yeah, I'm excited too. mean, I'm just excited to see what's everyone going to build and um you know, what's going to like capture the heart of the community the most, right? Like no one really knows. We're all just trying to do cool stuff and hoping that it resonates, but I'm sure we'll be surprised by, you know, the creativity. So. Awesome. Thank you. Thanks a lot, Peter.