Throughout most of its existence, Dogecoin has been good at two things: sending funds between wallets and producing dramatic price swings. A pair of launches over the past week aims to give DOGE holders a third use case, and the Dogecoin Foundation is clearly happy about it.
DogeOS opened a public test network for Ethereum-style trading, lending and other applications that run on DOGE. At roughly the same time, Metallicus rolled out DogecoinVM, a bridge that connects Dogecoin to its Metal network.
What the foundation’s director said
In a recent post on X, Dogecoin Foundation director Timothy Stebbing highlighted both releases.
“In the last week we’ve seen @DogeOS go live with their public testnet and an absolute avalanche of new projects building on their doge/EVM chain, and then Metallicus launched DogecoinVM which bridges Dogecoin to their Metal network. There are more options than ever to build…” Stebbing said.
Stebbing’s case is that having more ways to build on Dogecoin benefits the network, and that’s reasonable. Still, a testnet isn’t a mainnet. A burst of new projects on a test network shows that developers are interested. It doesn’t show that anyone is actually using them.
DogeOS wants to be Dogecoin’s app layer
DogeOS describes itself as Dogecoin’s app layer. The team behind it also built MyDoge, a Dogecoin wallet, so the project isn’t coming from unknown newcomers.
Its main selling point is Ethereum compatibility. Developers can build Dogecoin applications with tools they already know. That clears away one obvious reason so little has been built on DOGE beyond payments.
DogecoinVM claims a 300x speed boost
Metallicus is taking a different route. DogecoinVM is billed as a DOGE-compatible ledger on the Metal Blockchain.
Dogecoin itself isn’t changed. The gains are in speed and interoperability. According to Metallicus, the setup makes Dogecoin 300x faster with instant finality. That’s a bold claim, and it covers DOGE running on Metal’s ledger, not the base Dogecoin chain.
The chart is setting up for a golden cross
On the price side, the daily chart shows Dogecoin’s 50-day and 200-day moving averages drawing closer together. The coin is on track for a golden cross, which would be its first of 2026 if confirmed.
The last golden cross came in August 2025, more than a year ago. A month later, in September 2025, DOGE reached a high of $0.30. Past patterns aren’t guarantees, though, and shouldn’t be read as such.
The macro picture is pulling the other way
For now, DOGE sits at $0.093 and is down on both a daily and a weekly basis, in step with the wider crypto market.
A September jobs report that came in weaker than expected changed how traders see an October interest rate hike by the Federal Reserve. They now view it as a long shot. Investors are still pricing in the chance of a Fed hike in December.
The Fed will announce its next rate decision on October 28, after a two-day policy meeting. For anyone tracking DOGE, that date will probably move the price more than any testnet launch.