According to CoinDesk, the meme coin DOG is nearing a $1 billion market cap after a 200% surge over the past month. This makes it the largest meme coin on the Bitcoin blockchain and the seventh largest overall. The surge comes after a 60% decline following its launch and the Bitcoin halving event in April.

The DOG token was issued on Bitcoin's Runes protocol and has since become a significant player in the meme coin market. Despite most other meme coins being issued on faster blockchains like Solana and Base, DOG has helped establish Runes as a legitimate Bitcoin layer-2 network. Runes is a method of making transactions cheaper and faster than the Ordinals Protocol, which embeds data into the Bitcoin blockchain through small Bitcoin-based transactions.

The rise of DOG is part of a broader trend of meme coin activity, with coins like SHIB, PEPE, and FLOKI adding billions of dollars to their market caps since the start of the year. DOG has seen close to $100 million in trading volume over the past 24 hours as traders speculate on the potential success of a Bitcoin-based meme coin. However, it's important to note that meme coins are highly volatile assets, their value often influenced by social media narratives rather than underlying use cases. After its launch, DOG experienced a more than 60% slump in three weeks before its recent rally.