Dogecoin (DOGE)

Conceived in 2013 as a joke at the expense of the crypto mania: its authors took Litecoin's code, swapped the branding for an internet meme, and held neither a pre-mine nor a fundraise. The joke outlived most of the serious projects of its era.

Technically it is Scrypt proof of work with a block roughly every minute. There is no supply cap: each block pays a fixed reward, so supply grows in a straight line while the share of newly minted coins shrinks year by year — inflation here decays rather than accelerates. Security comes from merged mining with Litecoin: the same hardware protects both chains, and a miner collects a reward on each.

Use is confined to small transfers, tipping and payment wherever a merchant has agreed to accept it. The protocol changes rarely, and development is carried by volunteers. The fee stays small in nominal terms, which makes the chain handy for tiny payments and sensitive to floods of empty ones.

Demand is driven almost entirely by public attention and by remarks from well-known figures, not by protocol development, which moves rarely.