The story behind the most fairly distributed memecoin in history 🧵 It is very natural to have skepticism when you hear about a “free and fair” memecoin like $DOG given the rampant fraud and scamming in crypto so I encourage everyone not to trust but to verify what I am about to say $DOG was born out of a dream that Bitcoin could learn from the shortcomings of other ecosystems and have a culture that accrued value fairly and transparently to the people who deserve it the most rather than lining the pockets of KOLs, VCs, CEXs, market makers, the team, and other insiders who lie to your face To achieve this vision and to get $DOG to where it is today thousands of people had to come together to donate their time and capital 100% of the $DOG supply was airdropped for free with no team allocation and we refuse to participate in the corrupt practices of paying CEX listings fees, doing paid promotions, or hiring market makers so the only way to succeed was to raise an army This story starts in early 2024 with the Runestone Ordinals NFT collection 100% of the supply of Runestones was airdropped for free to 112,383 early Ordinals supporters (one per address) Then several months later 100% of the supply of $DOG was airdropped for free to Runestone holders (889,806 $DOG tokens per Runestone held) To ensure the fairness of the airdrop thousands of people had discussions for several weeks in a public forum about how the distribution algorithm should be structured These discussions were fully transparent, have been preserved, and can be viewed in the Runestone Discord Ultimately the community came to a consensus that the fairest possible algorithm that we could come up with was to airdrop 1 Runestone to every address that held at least 3 non-text-based Ordinals inscriptions on a retroactive snapshot date that was set to a date prior to the idea of Runestone and the pre-Runes meta starting so that it couldn’t have been farmed or gamed The decision to airdrop only one Runestone per address regardless of how valuable your inscriptions were or what collections you held is one of the things that we did that I am the most proud of It was a statement that regardless of if you were rich or poor, if you made the highly contrarian decision to show up and support Bitcoin when it needed you the most, you got a Runestone just like everyone else The algorithm was intentionally kept very simple so that anyone could understand it in plain English and know that there wasn’t any sort of shady code that favored anybody The algorithm was open-sourced and can be viewed on the fairdrop-addresses GitHub repo After the algorithm was decided a group of public, volunteer, trusted, independent verifiers (@gm7t2, @lfg, @OrdData, @_BitPunks_, and an anon dev) each implemented and ran it on their own and compared the list of addresses generated with each other Once we had a list of addresses that everyone agreed on several companies and developers (@okx, @lfg, @OrdData, and @_BitPunks_) volunteered to build and publish multiple address checker tools so that everyone could see if their address would receive a Runestone The airdrop algorithm was not perfect as no such algorithm is possible but a lot of people tried really really hard to make it as fair as possible and the general consensus is that based on all of the anecdotal evidence that people shared that they received a Runestone that was worth more than they made in an entire year of working that we did a pretty kickass job When it came to doing the actual airdrop the team at @ordinalsbot volunteered developer resources to execute it asking for nothing in return Runestone was a true free airdrop and there was no sneaky claim process where a $5 fee would be charged or anything like that 112,383 Runestones were directly sent out to the list of addresses Performing an airdrop of this scale on Bitcoin was unprecedented and very expensive and would not have been possible without the 10.25 BTC donated by @_BuoyantCapital, @cellmejiwa, @btcordinal, @HoneyBadgersBtc, @TheWizardsOfOrd, @MerlinLayer2, @BitmapTech, @raresatseeker, @runealpha_btc, @_BitPunks_, @OrdinalBlockOut, @ArtOnInternet, @SeizeCTRL, @lfg, @fomojis, and @okaybears to cover network fees These donors were not promised any promotion and received no extra tokens in return, these were true donations from people who wanted to support the mission It would not have been possible to mine the largest block in Bitcoin’s history or do an airdrop of this size without their support and we should all be eternally greatful for them Additionally, two exceptionally talented artists @cl_art_studio and @0xfar donated their time and energy to create the Runestone child and Runestone parent art that have since become iconic in crypto culture It is true that many people received more than one Runestone because they had multiple wallets and it is true that in a few cases, people reported receiving 25+ Runestones however given how abnormal it would have been to have had 25+ addresses each with 3+ JPEGs in them this was very rare I for example received 9 Runestones (less than 0.01% of the supply) however this was because I was a very avid Ordinals collector for the entire first year of the protocol I have never bought or sold a single Runestone and have given several away The accusation that the only reason I participated in any of this and have posted about Runestone and $DOG every day for the past year and a half is because I hold less than 0.01% of the supply is very dumb imo If I had wanted to make this a centralized project and taken 1%, 2%, or even 5% of the supply nobody would have probably cared that much given that in contrast the meta on Solana at the time was for influencers to either do a presale for 100% of the supply or snipe 50% of the supply on launch The reason I wasn’t treated special in the algorithm has nothing to do with me not wanting to make money (I am not anti-capitalistic and don’t hate money) it is because I believed in a vision for a truly fair launch coin with no premine just like Bitcoin and I knew that that vision was greater than any single person I also knew that it was critical for our movement that nobody including myself was above the ethos of free & fair And now free & fair is something that will live on in the culture of Runestone and $DOG forever which you cannot put a price on Runestone and $DOG are for the people and our actions not words are why this movement is resonating everyone People are tired of extractive NFT mints and rigged memecoin launches and are opting out with Runestone and $DOG When it came time to etch the $DOG Rune we had to compete to get the lowest Rune number possible in what effectively became an on-chain auction in block 840,00 Thanks to 4,427 community members who donated 2.9 BTC and received nothing special in return we were able to secure Rune #3 for $DOG in the 5th highest fee Bitcoin transaction in history Then @gm7t2 volunteered his time to execute the $DOG airdrop and once he had finished everything was complete The only thing left to do was spread $DOG and our ethos however because $DOG has no team nor team treasury it was up to the $DOG Army to determine its own fate $DOG intentionally uses a CC0 license which means that the $DOG IP is owned by everyone and there are zero limitations on how the IP can be used This has allowed people to create both for-profit and not-for-profit initiatives to educate about and spread $DOG So far people have created art, lotteries, plushies, websites, podcasts, magazines, X accounts, IRL meetups, clothing lines, PFP collections, telegram groups, TikTok accounts, and more 100% of the future of $DOG is in the hands of the $DOG Army so even things like websites and X accounts have had to be created by volunteers in the community given there are not any official ones Other projects talk about decentralization but $DOG lives it For example, the $DOG booth at the Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas right now and the $DOG party last night were put on by two community members who are building with $DOG @DogOfBitcoin is run by @VittoPantoliano who yes is a $DOG whale but he had to buy in like everyone else @CarbonApp_io is a small bootstrapped startup that is building an app for the $DOG Army I didn’t ask either of them to spend their time, energy, or capital to throw parties, and build on $DOG’s IP like this but they chose to do it on their own accord because the CC0 platform and mission of $DOG resonated deeply with them $DOG has no marketing team so $DOG-fluencers like @cryptolution101, @VittoPantoliano, @MrKeyway, @Relentless_btc, @joopooranski, @dogdamassa, @TheOG_General, @CoinsWeb3, and many more have had to step up and make sure that our message is heard I still hold less than 0.01% of the supply of $DOG tokens (that I was airdropped) and have never bought or sold a single $DOG token on purpose because I don’t want the narrative to shift somehow to being about how much money I have made or people speculating if I am going to dump, etc. $DOG is about ushering in a new era of freedom in the world by being stewards of the Bitcoin technology that Satoshi Nakamoto gifted us which means that we have to do things in a way that would make him proud Other blockchains can be the face of massive scams, corruption, insider information, and VCs pumping and dumping on your head but we can't let it happen on Bitcoin I will put the $DOG Army up against any deca-billion dollar crypto company any day of the week and I pity anyone who tries to get in our way We are decentralized, we are on the right side of history, and we are on a mission to go to the moon If you are tired of getting rugged and scammed or deep down know that when you are posting about a token that you are really just working for someone else’s bags then it is time to buy some $DOG, join the $DOG Army, and be part of a movement that is greater than yourself