Timothy Stebbing is an Australian software architect and engineer who serves as the Product Lead for the Dogecoin Foundation. He is known for his work in the Free and Open-Source Software (F/OSS) community and for authoring key strategic documents for the Dogecoin project, including the Dogecoin Manifesto and the Dogecoin Trailmap. ^[1]

Career

Timothy Stebbing has over 25 years of experience as a software architect and engineer, with a career that began in the Free and Open-Source Software (F/OSS) community in the late 1990s. His professional background includes roles in both large-scale enterprises and small startups, where he has held positions of technical leadership and managed senior engineering teams. Throughout his career, Stebbing has been actively involved in community building, organizing numerous open-source developer conferences and meetups aimed at fostering new talent. In late 2021, he joined the revitalized Dogecoin Foundation as its Product Lead, tasked with guiding the project's technical and community development. ^{[1] [2]}

Role at the Dogecoin Foundation

As Product Lead, Stebbing's primary responsibility is to analyze the challenges and opportunities facing Dogecoin and to propose strategies for enhancing its developer ecosystem. He also focuses on communicating complex technical concepts to a non-technical audience. Upon joining, he described his initial mandate as making sense of a "Joke/Meme Project that’s Accidentally Become a Success, and Help Steer it Toward Better." ^[1]

To structure his approach, Stebbing implemented a six-step strategic process:

1. Define: Understand the identity and meaning of Dogecoin for its various stakeholders.
2. Principle: Establish a core set of principles to guide decision-making.
3. Goal-Set: Use the established principles to set clear objectives.
4. Plan: Develop a concrete plan, which became the Dogecoin Trailmap, to achieve the goals.
5. Communicate: Articulate the plan to the community and developers to build support.
6. Execute: Implement the plan.

This process was informed by extensive research and discussions with Dogecoin core developers, community members, critics, and prominent figures in the technology and cryptocurrency space, including Elon Musk, Vitalik Buterin, and Dogecoin co-creator Billy Markus. ^[1]

Key Contributions

Stebbing has been instrumental in creating foundational documents and projects to guide Dogecoin's development and protect its future. His work focuses on establishing a clear purpose, expanding the developer base, and addressing external threats.

Dogecoin Manifesto

Stebbing authored the Dogecoin Manifesto, a document inspired by the Agile Manifesto, to outline the guiding principles for the project's development. It is founded on four key pillars:

• Being Useful: Prioritizing Dogecoin's utility as a functional currency over the implementation of complex features or technical novelty.
• Being Personable: Emphasizing individuals and interactions over profit-driven economics, drawing inspiration from community stories of using Dogecoin for practical needs.
• Being Welcoming: Fostering collaboration and trust with industry partners, NGOs, and other crypto projects rather than engaging in competition.
• Being Reliable: Valuing stable and working solutions over the speed of delivery to ensure Dogecoin can function as a dependable global currency. ^[1]

Dogecoin Trailmap

The Dogecoin Trailmap was created by Stebbing and the Foundation to address what were identified as three primary existential threats to the project's long-term viability.

Brand Protection

The first threat identified was the risk of bad-faith actors attempting to register trademarks for "Dogecoin" for their own benefit. The solution was to establish a legal, not-for-profit Dogecoin Foundation in the United Kingdom. This entity was created to hold the Dogecoin trademarks and protect the brand for the benefit of the entire community. ^[1]

Developer Centralization

The second threat was the project's heavy reliance on a small group of core developers, which created a single point of failure and risked developer burnout. To mitigate this, the Trailmap outlined a plan to expand and decentralize the developer ecosystem through several key initiatives:

• Libdogecoin: A C library of core Dogecoin functions designed to serve as a fundamental building block. This library lowers the barrier to entry for new developers wanting to create Dogecoin-compliant products without needing deep expertise in the protocol's specifics.
• Dogecoin Standard: A project to create comprehensive documentation and formal standards for the Dogecoin protocol.
• GigaWallet: A backend service with a high-level API that simplifies the integration of Dogecoin payments for merchants, exchanges, and social media platforms.
• Community Building: Actively engaging with new developers and fostering talent through partnerships with organizations like Hack Club.

These projects aim to make it easier for a wider range of developers to build on and contribute to the Dogecoin ecosystem. ^{[1] [2]}

External Pressure and Regulation

The third threat involved external pressures, including global environmental concerns regarding Proof-of-Work (PoW) mining and negative narratives framing cryptocurrencies as tools for illicit activities. The Trailmap proposed a multi-faceted strategy to counter these "attack vectors":

• Education: Creating resources like Dogepedia to provide the community with factual information to counter misinformation.
• Proof-of-Stake (PoS) Proposal: Initiating a community discussion about transitioning to a more energy-efficient consensus mechanism.
• Adoption: Encouraging wider mainstream adoption by retail and service industries to solidify its legitimacy.
• Charitable Integration: Building charitable functions directly into the protocol to create a positive social narrative and a political disincentive against regulatory attacks. ^[1]

Proof-of-Stake Proposal

In collaboration with advisors, including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Stebbing proposed a unique version of a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism for Dogecoin. The proposal centers on a community staking model designed to be inclusive and socially beneficial. Under this model, an on-chain, decentralized system would allow any user to stake any amount of Dogecoin to help run the network. A key feature of the proposal is a charitable component, where a portion of the staking rewards would be automatically distributed to selected charities and NGOs. This would make these organizations direct stakeholders in the health and security of the Dogecoin network, aiming to reward smaller holders, incentivize broader participation, and align the project with philanthropic causes. ^[1]

Personal Life

Timothy Stebbing is based in Australia. ^[2]