Dogecoin vs. Shiba Inu — Which Meme Coin Reigns Supreme?

Dogecoin and Shiba Inu are two of the largest meme coin projects on the market today, and their competitors are not particularly close. The next biggest meme coin, Pepe has a market capitalization of $395 million, while the market caps of Dogecoin and Shiba Inu are $8.6 billion and $4 billion, respectively. 

The comparison of Dogecoin vs. Shiba Inu is one of the first questions anyone who’s interested in meme coins will ask themselves. In this article, we’ll compare the two leading meme coins side-by-side to help you understand their similarities and differences. 

Before we get started with a closer comparison of Shiba Inu vs. Dogecoin, let’s quickly refresh our knowledge of these projects. 

About Dogecoin

Dogecoin (DOGE) is a cryptocurrency created in December 2013 by Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer. Although Dogecoin is now worth billions of dollars, it was initially meant to be a joke, making fun of the speculative nature of cryptocurrencies.

The name Dogecoin comes from a popular internet meme featuring a dog called “doge.” The Dogecoin logo often features a picture of a Shiba Inu dog. Dogecoin has reached an impressive level of popularity, and has even attracted high-profile backers, most notably Elon Musk. 

Technically speaking, Dogecoin is a variation of another cryptocurrency called Luckycoin. Luckycoin is a variation of Litecoin, which itself is a variation of Bitcoin. Dogecoin’s security is ensured through a method called Proof-of-Work, and it is mined together with Litecoin.

Unlike Bitcoin and Litecoin, which have a maximum number of coins that can exist, Dogecoin can theoretically have an unlimited supply. Every year, 5 billion new Dogecoins are created and put into circulation.

About Shiba Inu

Shiba Inu (SHIB) is a cryptocurrency that exists as a token on the Ethereum blockchain. It follows the ERC-20 standard, which is a common method for creating interchangeable tokens on Ethereum. Shiba Inu was introduced in August 2020 by an anonymous developer known as “Ryoshi.” Another key person in the Shiba Inu project is “Shytoshi Kusama,” who acts as the lead developer.

A notable characteristic of Shiba Inu is its exceptionally large token supply. Initially, there were an astounding one quadrillion SHIB coins in circulation, although a significant portion was gifted to Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum (not associated with the project). Buterin later sold some of his SHIB tokens to support charitable causes and burned the remaining tokens.

Shiba Inu was initially promoted as the “Dogecoin killer.” In essence, it was designed as a token inspired by internet memes that would incorporate Ethereum’s decentralized finance capabilities.

Dogecoin vs. Shiba Inu — Side-by-side comparison

Now that we know the basics of both projects, let’s compare DOGE vs. SHIB by some of the most important metrics. 

TABLE

Features

Dogecoin is a simple cryptocurrency based on a Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism. It features the same Scrypt hashing algorithm as Litecoin, which means that DOGE can be merge-mined alongside LTC.

Dogecoin allows users to send DOGE tokens to each other on a peer-to-peer, decentralized basis. The Dogecoin network operates 24/7 and offers low-cost and relatively fast transactions. If you’re looking for fancy features like smart contracts, however, you should consider other cryptocurrencies.

Recently, we’ve seen the introduction of “DRC-20” tokens built on the Dogecoin network. This has been made possible through “Ordinals”, a technology that was first introduced to Bitcoin but later made its way to other cryptocurrencies such as Dogecoin and Litecoin. However, it’s unclear at this stage if Dogecoin-based tokens will have staying power or if it’s just a temporary fad.

Unlike Dogecoin, which is its own cryptocurrency, Shiba Inu exists as a token on another cryptocurrency network, Ethereum. Therefore, the security of SHIB transaction depends on Ethereum’s Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism.

Shiba Inu uses the ERC-20 token standard, which is the most popular standard for fungible tokens issued on Ethereum. This means that it can be easily transacted between users or used in protocols like Uniswap.

The fact that SHIB is on the Ethereum network means that it can potentially offer a lot more features than DOGE. The developers behind the Shiba Inu project are working on a number of decentralized products that utilize SHIB tokens, such as decentralized exchanges, staking platforms and a metaverse platform.

Arguably the most notable project from the Shiba Inu team is Shibarium, a layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum that offers cheaper and faster transactions compared to the Ethereum mainnet.

Transaction fees

As, we’ve already explained, SHIB’s reliance on Ethereum is a positive from one perspective, since it means the token can easily be used in a variety of decentralized protocols. However, there’s also a big downside, as transactions on Ethereum are quite expensive. This also applies to all tokens issued on the Ethereum network, including SHIB.

Realistically, you’ll have to pay at least a couple of dollars in fees for each SHIB transaction, and the fees could even increase above $10 if there is congestion on the Ethereum network.

Meanwhile, Dogecoin is much cheaper to transfer than Shiba Inu. In fact, DOGE is one of the cheapest cryptos to transfer overall, as it has an average transaction fee of about $0.08. You can expect your Dogecoin transaction to be complete in about 1 minute.

Tokenomics

Dogecoin started with an initial supply of 100 billion coins, although there is no supply limit for how many DOGE coins can exist. Dogecoin is inflationary, as about 5 billion DOGE enters circulation per year. 

Dogecoin’s large supply means that DOGE’s price per unit is very low. However, other meme coin projects like Shiba Inu took this concept to the extreme and gave their coins an even bigger supply.

For example, Shiba Inu started with a massive supply of 1 quadrillion tokens. Half of the supply was sent to Ethereum inventor Vitalik Buterin (who has no affiliation with Shiba Inu). Buterin eventually donated some of his SHIB coins and burned the rest. Currently, there are about 589 trillion Shiba Inu coins in circulation.

Unlike Dogecoin, SHIB is not inflationary. In fact, the SHIB supply will slowly decline over time thanks to various burning programs. Notably, the Shibarium layer 2 platform implements a mechanism in which SHIB tokens are burned with every transaction made on the platform.

Still, the fact that Shiba Inu has such a massive supply means that it likely won’t ever reach price targets such as $1.

The bottom line

Even though both are meme coins based on the Doge internet meme, our comparison of SHIB vs. DOGE has hopefully shown that there’s a number of crucial differences between Dogecoin and Shiba Inu. 

The key difference between Dogecoin and Shiba Inu is that Dogecoin has its own network, while Shiba Inu is issued on the Ethereum network. This gives Shiba Inu a lot more flexibility, but also makes it significantly more expensive to use. 

A big advantage of Dogecoin is that it has been around for much longer than Shiba Inu. Over the years, DOGE has successfully carved out a niche for itself in the crypto market, and will likely stick around for the long term. Meanwhile, the long-term viability of Shiba Inu is still uncertain.

Meanwhile, the success of Shiba Inu will likely depend on how the products being developed by the project will be accepted by the crypto community. If products like Shibarium and ShibaSwap fail to gain traction, Shiba Inu could continue losing ground against Dogecoin.

If you’re interested in smaller meme coin projects, make sure to check out our article explaining how to find new meme coins early.