Dogecoin Developer Langer Hans: "very moon. so wow." - From The CoinFront

Different coins are known for different things. Bitcoin is the progenitor, Darkcoin is the secretive one, and Potcoin is…well, um, I forget.

But it’s hard to argue that any crypto coin has more personality than Dogecoin. Their activities so far have shown that a coin can thrive when built around a solid community presence, and that we don’t need to take cryptocurrency so seriously all the time.

But although being part of the Dogecoin community is mostly fun and games, developing a coin is always a serious, and potentially risky, endeavour. After all, when errors can mean loss of access to funds, you’d better make sure your code is good before you implement it.

Dogecoin Core developer Max Keller, better known to the community as Langer Hans, sat down with The CoinFront to give us some insight into how the Dogecoin community works behind the scenes.

I know you as Max, but the rest of the cryptocurrency world knows you as Langer Hans. Why did you choose this pseudonym?

The name? I used it long long before. There is actually no real story behind it. I found it funny many years back and stuck to it.

Well that’s kind of anticlimactic

I know, people always expect a story behind it!

So what’s your background? How did you first get into cryptocurrency?

I’m 24 years old, and an Android engineer and developer by day. I think if I remmeber correctly, I read about Bitcoin a few years back. I tried to mine with miserable success using a really low end GPU.

I came back when Litecoin was rallying around the $4 range and left pretty quick, cause I’m no economist and no trader Then Dogecoin came up, which a freind of mine informed me of. I put it away as a funny thing but got back into it the day after. The cryptocurrency tech was interesting to me. Something new. So I stuck around.

What drew you to the cryptocurrency world in the first place?

What really drew me into it was Dogecoin. I was looking for some new thing to take on as I had free time. Dogecoin and crypto in general was interesting because it was something new and innovative for me. I saw the opportunity to contribute to the community by developing. That being said, without the nice community, I’m not sure if I would have kept it up. So yes, the community played a big role actually.

The ventures before, I wouldn’t really call involvement.

When did you first get involved with Dogecoin?

Let me check…I received my first coins on December 11th. I heard about it the day before I think. It was a lot of reading first. Some chatting here and there, then I started actually working on things. The subreddit was created December 8th.

Cool, so you’re a really early adopter. You’ve been there pretty much since the beginning. How do you see the community having developed? Is it still heading in a positive direction compared to the early days?

I feel like overall the community is still very positive. I enjoy what comes from it. I’d like to say that this also extends to the various other communities. It is a bit of a misconception that Dogecoin revolves around reddit. I also enjoy the IRC communities for example.

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What do you think the IRC communities offer that /r/dogecoin doesn’t?

Personally I’m a fan of realtime communication. It is fun. But comparing both is not really possible as they are very different concepts. The number of active users on IRC is actually most of the times higher than on reddit though.

You recently implemented AuxPoW to Dogecoin. Last time we talked, you mentioned there were some misconceptions about it. What are some of those?

First, it wasn’t me who implemented it. It was lots of teamwork there to get it up and running from the core and the extended dev teams.

And when it first came up, it looked to many like we would be actually “merging” with Litecoin. That is not correct though. Technically all that AuxPoW enables us is accepting work done on a different blockchain. Other coins would be able to supply the work too. Of course the hashrate now comes from Litecoin as they had it before.

The second one is, that AuxPoW is not a full protection against 51% attacks, or any attacks for that matter. It just makes it harder (relative to the amount of hashrate put in and the distribution)

Then, it was not first proposed by (Litecoin founder) Charlie Lee. It was brought up and had been discussed before.

Right, but it was Charlie Lee’s proposal where most people first heard about AuxPoW right?

True, he was very vocal about it

Yeah, I remember the Dogecoinball comics about it portraying Litecoin as desperate for Dogecoin’s love.

For the record, Charlie found the comics very funny and enjoyed them

I’d hope so. The Dogecoin community is too happy and friendly to be malicious about that sort of thing. So do you think AuxPoW is the reason for Dogecoin’s recent surge in value?

That I’d opt to not comment on. Reason is that I’m a developer, and not an economist. It would be speculation either way.

Well do you think the price has much to do with Dogecoin’s success?

Oh I think success of a coin comes from far more factors than just price. Adoption for example. Being actually useful in the real world.

Do you think Dogecoin is moving in the right direction in that regard?

It is one of the things to focus on. But yes, I think we did pretty good so far with adoption. I can for example buy a lot of things of all sorts with my coins. There are lots of service providers and merchants out there accepting Dogecoin. I can also use them tip on a high number of different platforms.

So you spend your dogecoins? What’s the coolest thing you’ve bought with them so far?

I’m actually more into tipping and charity. I did look into buying stuff with it before. Mostly digital good like games. Nothing really outstanding there.

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Speaking of charity, it’s hard to argue that Dogecoin’s charitable contributions have been Dogecoin’s greatest victory from a community standpoint. Especially Josh Wise and the Dogecar. What do you think has been the greatest victory from a development standpoint?

From a development standpoint it was the move away from the Litecoin codebase to the Bitcoin codebase with version 1.7. We were actually the first altcoin who did that and are still the only one.

And for those of us who aren’t familiar with code, what did that do for Dogecoin?

It brought us on par with the Bitcoin Core client. That includes the stability, the functionality and the development speed. We are now able to basically follow Bitcoin’s development, thereby keeping up with the underlying tech that drives the network.

Giving us security and bug fixes along the way in a timely manner.

And that’s more useful than being able to follow Litecoin?

There was not much following Litecoin. Dogecoin was brought to the latest Litecoin codebase with a previous version and after that we made the jump to Bitcoin, thereby implementing stuff that Litecoin didn’t have at that point (mostly under the hood if I’m not mistaken at the moment).

What’s the most difficult part of being a developer for Dogecoin?

I guess that’s different from dev to dev. But I personally feel like it’s the balance between working on the coin, the day job and free time. We’re all volunteers.

And you’ve managed to accomplish so much so far. That’s awesome.

Yup, the teams work very well.

Unlike most other cryptocurrencies, Dogecoin has no hard-coded limit. How do you think that will affect Dogecoin?

That pretty much would be looking into a crystal ball. It will be interesting to see how it develops overall. But estimations? Impossible to make. I’m not a fan of speculation. As I said, no background in economy things, so I don’t want to burn my fingers there.

Other than Dogecoin, what do you think is the most interesting cryptocoin on the market right now?

I’m not looking at any specifically. I’m more looking in advancements in the technology itself. I think people call that Crypto 2.0. Personally I hold only Dogecoin at the moment.

Or let me correct that. I do have also Bitcoin, but not much. And may have received tips in other coins but not really worth mentioning.

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So you’re a one-coin guy, eh? Doge all the way?

It is what has drawn me into crypto and so far I stuck with it. Occasionally I got to help other coins, but that was mostly offering a hand for a moment or giving advice on dev related things. So pretty much one-coin-guy.

From a technical perspective, what do you think are the big issues the cryptocurrency needs to solve in order to move forward?

I think the user experience plays a key role in it. Crypto must be easy to use to gain higher mainstream usage. Usability is important. That of course extends to overall ease of use. Which is true for the other side, the services, too. The easier it is for a merchant to support crypto, the more likely it is for them to do it.

I think so too. Things are a little clunky right now, kind of like the early internet. But everything works better now that smart people have had a decade or two to make it easier

Agreed!

Now that AuxPoW is in place, what’s next for the Dogecoin development team?

Immediate would be version 1.8.1 bringing us up par with Bitcoin again. It also introduces a new feature we’ll talk about later on.

After that we should have some time to also look a bit closer at the other wallet implementations like the light wallets out there, or even upcoming new projects. With a team of volunteers it’s hard to set a fixed goal on things. But keeping up with Bitcoin definately plays a big role for us as a stable base of the network is very important to us too.

So you need to release an update every time Bitcoin does to keep up?

No, we don’t need to. but it is what we are able to do. Of course, there will also be a delay, easily explained by the time we’re able to put into it. If there is an immediate security issue though we’d be able to push things out faster.

So I know you’re not a fan of speculation…but where would you like to see Dogecoin in the future?

would love to see it as widely accepted currency and of course with the light hearted and fun community still around supporting wothwhile causes and having fun with tipping and using their coin. As I said above, acceptance is something to look forward to. So it would be great to see high adoption on both merchant/services and user sides.

Well that’s all the questions I had today Max. Thanks for taking the time to chat!

very moon. so wow

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Dogecoin Developer Langer Hans: "very moon. so wow."