Good news, everyone!

Today we are announcing two things:

First, we are now accepting Dogecoin for our 3D printing services. If there’s something you want such as a cover for your Google Glass camera (http://www.thingiverse.com/ thing:182763), or a stand for your Google Glass(http://www.thingiverse. com/thing:118339), or something which doesn’t at all relate to that product at all – we now quote prices in Dogecoin! (Yes, we still take BTC and LTC). Much additive manufacturing! Such adoption!

For over a year, CryptoPrinting has seen steady interest, which we have been able to service without scaling: If many orders and requests arrive, we will likely have to start a waiting list until we can scale up to deal with demand. (I say this particularly for the benefit of our BTC and LTC customers who may have come to expect fast service, which I would not want to give up providing. The second announcement is regarding #Dogetags! Yes, we are working to develop an NFC-capable Dogecoin simulacrum, which you can use to do all of the things you could do with our water-resistant NFC tags, such as:

Store your private keys (wrap it in foil to prevent stray scanning)!

Store a single private key and become your own bank;

Store your public address so that others can scan it to pay you;

Theoretically you might store a variety of public addresses for different coins, so that people can pay with what they wish (still looking into this).

Additionally, we realized that you could use CryptoPrinting’s #Dogetags as real-world dogtags and store your contact info on a little 3D printed tag attached to all your canine pals! Or use your dog as your bank and keep the private key on him! You do what you want to do with it; out-of-the-box thinking encouraged. Very printed, much wow!

Since we’ve already received positive responses about this idea, we’d like to get serious about it. This is where some community involvement would be great because:

1. For something like this to be useful to people who are trying to use them to keep their pets safe/have their pets returned promptly, we would need some kind of awareness campaign to make sure people recognize these tags and are aware that their NFC capable smartphones can retrieve the dog owner’s data. We need a little bit of assistance spreading the broader idea of this #Dogetag project, which will hopefully be an open source, decentralized, opt-in, pet identification system. Please join in on the conversation here: http://www.reddit.com/r/dogetag

2. We need to choose a consistent model or models to help facilitate #1, which we could make a fun contest out of. There are a few Dogecoin models on Thingiverse but they all have different problems, either in their design, or some kind of non-manifold STL, which resists repair. If there’s anyone experienced with running a fair crypto-driven contest, we would like some input on how to do it well. Model Design requirements: We need a recognizable coin with a hole in it, which is sized to allow an NFC tag to be inserted during printed without overlapping the hole. In general our other coins are around ~3.8cm in diameter, for comparison.

3. I cannot possibly supply the larger needs of pet lovers alone should this catch on. In an effort to deal with this proactively, while also celebrating one year of operation, I will be open sourcing the NFC coin-making process, hopefully giving anyone with access to NFC stickers and a 3D printer the tools required to make their own #Dogetags.

Here’s the plan:

1. We need to solve the 3D model/STL problem first through the design contest. I’d like to make it as democratic as possible with rewards going to the winning designer, but if we can reward all participants – great!

2. Once the model is chosen and I’ve made sure that the NFC/printing part is working, the open sourcing of the process will be developed so that others can make their own coins. From there on out it’s mostly an information campaign “If you find a dog with this on, scan it and return them please!” Anyone who wants one can make their own, and those who want to purchase one are welcome to do so.

3. After that point, CryptoPrinting will take orders until I’m booked solid, then I’ll start looking to scale our local operation, build a more distributed printing network as needed, or otherwise rely on people to create their own #Dogetags. Such a network would also need some decentralized reputation network to build off of, which I’m not sure exists yet. Either way, very excite! Much opportunity!

It’s a brave new world in Cryptoland!

-CryptoPrinting