Dogecoin Fee Structure Proposal Released, Marked 'Important' by Elon Musk

A proposal regarding a new fee structure and policy for Dogecoin (DOGE) Core has been released on GitHub, receiving the support of Elon Musk, who celebrates his 50th birthday on June 28, too.

Today, Ross Nicoll, Dogecoin’s lead maintainer, announced that “the Dogecoin fee change proposal is up,” and it seems to have already received Tesla chief’s support, as Musk commented: “Important to support.”

This is reminiscent of the exchange seen several days ago, when Nicoll tweeted about the fee reduction code, with Musk calling it “an important improvement.”

Just a matter of time they implement Prove of Elon where Elon Signs Every Transaction in Person.

— LightningDuke (@Battleangle) June 28, 2021

At 10:20 UTC, DOGE, ranked 6th by market capitalization, trades at USD 0.25 and is up by 4% in a day, trimming its weekly losses to less than 10%.

Per Dogecoin developer Patrick Lodder, the proposal to all Dogecoin stakeholders “suggests to reduce average fees 100x for standard transactions on the Dogecoin chain, split full control over all aspects of fees between miners and node operators, rely less on core development, and bring back a functional (small) free transaction space that incentivizes keeping the network healthy.”

According to GitHub, these proposed changes are:

lower the minimal relay fee to DOGE 0.001
lower the dust limit to DOGE 0.01
lower the default fee rate to DOGE 0.01
set the default block inclusion fee rate to DOGE 0.01
bring back a functional free transaction space.

The GitHub document also states that the structure would be gradually deployed to the network over multiple software releases:

“The proposed changes […] bring the decision power towards which transactions to include back to miners instead of the relay network and increase configurability of all fee-related parameters, enhancing the sovereignty of each individual node operator and the community as a whole.”

And while many seem to support the development, Guardian Circle founder and author Mark Jeffrey tweeted that DOGE’s increased profile and value are “invit[ing]” attacks, and the more it succeeds, the probability rises that it will fail through an attack, and specifically a 51% attack – when a group of miners gain control of more than 50% of a network’s blockchain.

“Going out on a limb: Someone is going to 51% attack DOGE,” wrote Jeffrey. “Back of the napkin estimates say it would cost *only [USD] 8M* to overwhelm DOGE. As DOGE’s profile rises, someone WILL do it. This is where Bitcoin’s specific proof-of-work makes an enormous difference.”