Before creating the popular meme-inspired cryptocurrency Dogecoin, Billy Markus first developed an experimental digital token in 2013 called BELLS. However, this predecessor to Dogecoin was quickly abandoned after Markus launched Dogecoin just days later. DOGE would rapidly attract a large following. Now, nine years later, a small group has miraculously revived the long-dormant cryptocurrency network.
On December 5th, 2023, Dogecoin celebrated its 10th birthday. Inspired by this milestone, Adam McBride, an avid Dogecoin supporter, came across Markus’ 2013 Bitcoin Talk forum post announcing a new cryptocurrency. That project was BELLS.
Intrigued, McBride reached out to his friend and “uber dev” Luke Wright to investigate whether BELLS could be revived after its entire network infrastructure had been offline for nearly a decade.
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Dogecoin founder’s BELLS is now functioning
After some initial exploration, Wright confirmed that the original BELLS network and blockchain halted functioning in late 2014. Although forked community versions limped along for a few more years. However, in just two hours, Wright was able to use the archived source code and bootstrap enough network nodes to regain the functionality of the authentic first version of BELLS created by Markus.
After several days of troubleshooting connectivity and consensus issues, McBride reported that BELLS now appears to be fully operational once again in its original 2013 form. However, BELLS failed to gain more than very minimal adoption. It’s user base went to the breakout popularity of Dogecoin in December 2013.
Time will tell whether this historical blockchain rebuild will garner renewed interest for use and development or remain a curio from the early pioneering days of cryptocurrencies.