How Dogecoin supply works
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If you search for how much Dogecoin exists, you will see different numbers. That is expected: Dogecoin does not store a total supply in its protocol, and every publisher chooses how to count.
On-chain total (doge.supply): 156,524,592,865 DOGE from our own Dogecoin Core node.
Some market sites list a “total supply” near ~171 billion DOGE. That
figure is not what gettxoutsetinfo or Core’s reward schedule produce.
See the live clock on doge.supply and the API at
api.doge.supply/api/supply.
doge.supply measures total supply from on-chain data (the live UTXO set, with history indexed from genesis). Other published totals differ when they use a different metric, source, or shortcut — not because the chain has two official totals.
What total supply is
Total supply is not a field in the Dogecoin protocol. New DOGE is created only as the block subsidy — today 10,000 newly minted coins per block. Miners are also paid the transaction fees from that block; those fees are existing coins moved to the miner, not new issuance.
New supply = the subsidy in each block. Coins that exist right now = the UTXO set.
Every new DOGE is paid in the coinbase — the first transaction in each
block — together with any fees. A full Dogecoin Core node can report the live total via
gettxoutsetinfo (sum of unspent outputs). That answers “right now” at a single
moment. A full history back to genesis requires reading block data, not millions of
per-block RPC calls.
Three eras of minting
Dogecoin launched on December 6, 2013. Block rewards were not uniform for all of history. The protocol targets one block per minute. Current schedule, from the Dogecoin Core FAQ:
| Block range | Subsidy (DOGE/block) |
|---|---|
| 1–99,999 | 0–1,000,000 (random) |
| 100,000–144,999 | 0–500,000 (random) |
| 145,000–199,999 | 250,000 |
| 200,000–299,999 | 125,000 |
| 300,000–399,999 | 62,500 |
| 400,000–499,999 | 31,250 |
| 500,000–599,999 | 15,625 |
| 600,000+ | 10,000 (permanent) |
Era 1: Randomized rewards (blocks 1–144,999)
Early blocks used a Mersenne Twister draw between 0 and a maximum that halved at 100,000 blocks. There is no closed-form formula that recovers exact cumulative issuance from block height alone — you must read each block’s subsidy. Starting with block 145,000, rewards were fixed so large pools could not skip low-reward blocks.
Era 2: Halving schedule (blocks 145,000–599,999)
From block 145,000, subsidies were fixed and halved every 100,000 blocks (250,000 → 125,000 → 62,500 → 31,250 → 15,625).
Era 3: Permanent reward (block 600,000+)
Starting with block 600,000, Dogecoin issues a permanent 10,000 DOGE subsidy per block. Issuance has no end date; the amount per block, per day, and per year is capped. Most of the chain’s life is in this era today.
supply at height H = supply at anchor + (H − anchor) × 10,000
At one block per minute that is about 5.26 billion new DOGE per year (10,000 × 60 × 24 × 365.25). The inflation rate falls as supply grows.
Why published figures differ
No single official number exists on chain. What you see depends on the metric, the data source, and how early-block history is handled. Figures also move every block and refresh on different schedules.
| Metric / method | Typical range | What it usually means |
|---|---|---|
| On-chain total (UTXO / issuance) | ~156B | Coins that exist on the main chain (doge.supply uses this) |
| Market-site “total supply” | ~171B | Common aggregator field — does not match Core UTXO / reward schedule |
| Circulating supply | Varies | Coins treated as available; definitions vary by publisher |
| Height × 10,000 (naive) | ~63B+ at 6.3M blocks | Ignores all pre-600k history; not a supply total |
| Scheduled-reward estimate | ~156B | Official era rules, with averages for the random-reward era |
Small differences around ~156B are normal — block height, rounding, and refresh timing — when the same underlying idea (chain-based total) is used. A jump to ~171B is a different methodology, not a newer on-chain tip.
What is a coinbase transaction?
Every block has one special transaction at index 0 — the coinbase — where the subsidy is paid:
Block N ├── Tx 0: COINBASE ← subsidy (new DOGE) + fees (existing coins) ├── Tx 1: transfer └── Tx …
To reconstruct issuance you need each block’s subsidy (the new coins in that coinbase). You do not need wallet balances or transfer graphs. Fees in the coinbase are not extra supply.
How doge.supply measures supply
| Component | Method |
|---|---|
| Live counter | Core gettxoutsetinfo baseline + 10,000 DOGE/block; interpolates at the mint rate between tip syncs |
| Periodic refresh | Node tip (getblockchaininfo) about once per minute; UTXO baseline refreshed on the node host |
| Supply chart | Subsidy-only cumulative history (fees are not new supply), rebased to the UTXO tip |
| When node is unreachable | Extrapolate from last known baseline |
Key points
- Total supply is counted from chain data — not block height × a single reward.
- Early Dogecoin used random block rewards; only reading those blocks gets Era 1 right.
- On-chain totals are about 156B DOGE; some market sites show ~171B for a different “total supply” pipeline.
- Since block 600,000: 10,000 new DOGE per block, ~5.26B DOGE per year at one block per minute.
References
- dogecoin.com — History of Dogecoin (launch date)
- dogecoin.com — What is a miner? (10,000 DOGE subsidy vs fees; one-minute blocks)
- dogecoin.com — Can you put a cap on Dogecoin? (issuance has no end date)
- Dogecoin Core FAQ — block reward schedule
- doge.supply — live supply clock
- About doge.supply — project and infrastructure