What Is DOGS? Telegram’s Native Dog Meme Coin

Introduction

Telegram was first launched as a messaging service in 2013, beginning on iOS and shortly later on Android. Known for its privacy, Telegram quickly became the de facto messaging application within the crypto space as users valued the ability to message others without revealing their phone numbers. Even outside the crypto space, Telegram is an industry leader in its own right, with almost a billion users worldwide. With their enormous user base and recent steps to expand the reach of their own L1 blockchain, The Open Network (TON), TON is quickly shaping up to becoming one of the leading L1s, having recently also broken into the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.

In this year alone, the total value locked on the TON blockchain has expanded exponentially from a mere $13.5M in January to a whopping $518.95M today, with many investors comparing it with the likes of Solana and Base.

A large portion of this explosive growth has been attributed to the integration of the TON wallet into Telegram as well as the development of Telegram’s Mini Apps which have created an extensive selection of applications within the ecosystem. These Mini Apps include popular games such as Notcoin and Hamster Kombat, which have millions of monthly active users.

The Dogs Mini App has also emerged as one of the top Mini Apps on the platform, garnering over 53M users in just two months.

But what exactly is Dogs?

What Is DOGS?

The DOGS mascot, Spotty, has its origins from way back, initially an illustration created by Telegram founder, Pavel Durov, in a charity auction for orphanages. The illustration was sold on gifts, through which the proceeds were donated to charities. The dog soon became an icon in the Russian social media space, with the illustration being adopted as the unofficial logo for Russian social media site, VKontakte, which Pavel Durov is also a co-founder of. The mascot later found its way to stickers on the site and even made an appearance at VK Fest, an open air music festival organized by VKontakte.

DOGS Airdrop and Quests

The first distribution of the DOGS token was made claimable to all Telegram users with a username, based on the age of their Telegram account, wallet reputation as well as a handful of additional metrics.

Since its launch, users have had the opportunity to earn more DOGS tokens through various simple actions and quests, such as checking the app daily, connecting their Telegram wallet to the app and even just adding the bone emoji to their Telegram names.

Charitable Activities

True to its mascot’s origins in charity, the DOGS community has also embraced this culture of giving as their own.

On July 13, the team released Stars for DOGS, a 3 day charity drive in which users could make donations through Telegram Stars, a virtual token system on Telegram which can be used to purchase digital goods and services within the Telegram ecosystem, similar to how Google Play Store credits or Apple gift cards function. All of the proceeds were to be donated to a charity selected via a community vote on X.

In just three days, the drive raised a total of 23,813,064 Stars, which at the time was worth approximately $309,569. In return, users who purchased Stars for the drive also received DOGS tokens for their donations.

On August 15, these proceeds were donated across three different charities: Save the Children, Save an Orphan and the Animal Charity Evaluators.

DOGS Tokenomics

The DOGS token has a total supply of 550B tokens, with 93.95% of the total token supply to be unlocked on launch.

Like many other memecoins, the bulk of the tokens have been allocated to the community airdrop, with 73% allocated to the initial airdrop. The median airdrop size is 9,500 DOGS per user, with 42.2M out of the current 53M users on the Mini App being eligible for the airdrop.

10% has been allocated to the team for future development of the project, with the bulk of the team allocation to vest over a 12-month period.

Another 8.5% of the token supply has also been set aside for liquidity provision on centralized and decentralized exchanges to ensure a smooth trading experience on launch day.

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