Dogecoin Foundation Returns After 6-Year Hiatus; Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin, Musk Rep Jared Birchall Join Board

What Happened: After six years, the Dogecoin Foundation has been re-established with a renewed focus on supporting the Dogecoin DOGE/USD ecosystem, adding some high-profile names to its board of advisors.

According to a statement from the foundation, the board of advisors will include Ethereum ETH/USD co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk’s legal and financial advisor Jared Birchall.

Birchall, a former senior vice president at Morgan Stanley MS, is also on the board of the Musk Foundation and manages Musk’s family office. The executive will represent Musk’s interests on the Dogecoin advisory board alongside Buterin, Dogecoin founder Billy Markus and core developer Max Keller.

The Foundation Board consists of core developers Ross Nicoll and Michi Lumin, along with product and community leads Timothy Stebbing, Gary Lachance, and Jens Wiechers.

See also: How To Buy Dogecoin

Why It Matters: Now that the Foundation has been re-launched, a structure will be put in place to hire full-time staff to work on the project. These include engineers who would work towards faster integration and easier APIs for financial, social and charitable projects wishing to use Dogecoin.

The Dogecoin Foundation also stated its intent to protect the Dogecoin brand.

“In recent times, numerous attempts have been made to co-opt the ‘Dogecoin’ brand in various jurisdictions, in ways that would prevent the community and the project itself from using them,” said the project.

Indeed, a number of companies have introduced "Doge-themed" products this year, including Unilever PLC's UL Axe deodorant that launched a limited edition DOGE scent and Kraft Heinz Co KHC subsidiary Oscar Mayer that auctioned limited edition “Hot Doge Weiners” on eBay Inc EBAY.

Now, however, the Dogecoin Foundation said it exclusively holds the Dogecoin mark and the Dogecoin Logo and intends to maintain them for the community.

DOGE Price Action: DOGE was trading at a price of $0.30, down 7.2% over the past 24-hours. The meme-based cryptocurrency had a trading volume of $5.6 billion at the time of writing.