There is a growing buzz surrounding the Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE) and Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) bridge. Here are the key things you need to know about the link between the two major cryptocurrencies.
Such Support, Much Wow: Last month Vitalik Buterin, the co-creator of Ethereum revealed in a conversation with Lex Fridman that Dogecoin proved to be one of his “best investments.” Buterin had days earlier said that a secure Doge-Ethereum bridge would be “amazing.”
See Also: How To Buy Dogecoin (DOGE)
Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk, who is known to often comment on Dogecoin, and has been pushing development in the cryptocurrency expressed agreement with Buterin on Twitter.
I pretty much agree with Vitalik
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 5, 2021
The Bridge, Explained: Quite simply, the bridge allows a user to send Dogecoin from its native blockchain to the Ethereum blockchain, where it is converted into tokens that can then interact with other actors like Decentralized Finance or DeFi. After all of that, the token can be reconverted to DOGE and brought back to the Dogecoin blockchain through the bridge.
Not only can this extend new functionality to DOGE like smart contracts and DeFi, the token form factor of DOGE can also enjoy faster transaction speeds.
Oscar Guindzberg, a developer involved in the project, reveals that “the bridge will allow [DOGEs] to be used in a Dex, DeFi or any other dapp like any other ERC-20 token.”
Building The Bridge: While all the talk of the bridge makes the news, the connect between the two cryptocurrencies is still a work in progress. Guindzberg told Benzinga that the “release date is yet not established.” He confirmed that there is a working prototype in place.
When asked if the growing popularity of Dogecoin has resulted in a boost in the development team’s numbers, Guindzberg said, “A lot of people have approached us but most people are non-technical, just doge fans.”
The Costs Are No Longer Prohibitive: In a 2018 paper, Guindzberg noted that the DOGE-ETH bridge requires over $10,000 in gas (transaction fee) per day to keep up with the DOGE blockchain. That estimate was made when each ETH cost $450.
A back-of-the-envelope calculation puts that cost today at nearly $69,000 per day, taking the press time ETH price of $3,107.03 into account. Such issues have been since resolved, as per Guindzberg.
Guindzberg told Benzinga that the issue was resolved through Superblocks. A Superblock, as per the 2018 paper, allows several blocks to be grouped in order to minimize costs, which means instead of sending and validating and storing 60-700-byte blocks in one hour, the developers only need to store one superblock less than 200 bytes in size.
