Lots of current activity.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoindev/comments/7q8ik9/quick_developer_roundup_13_jan_2018 makes it clear all three main core developers are working on the latest update.

https://twitter.com/dogecoin_devs is very active.

https://github.com/dogecoin/dogecoin/tree/1.14-dev is also very active - people who claimed no activity were looking at the wrong branch *facepalm*

$1.2 million bounty for the DOGE-ETHEREUM bridge exists and finally it has been announced by Alex Van der Sande that announced that the first part of the bounty has been paid https://twitter.com/avsa/status/951890472150208513

Dogecoin devs announce that demo of the bridge is planned for next month
https://twitter.com/dogecoin_devs/status/952496699859177472

Nice time for price to pump ahead of Chinese New "Year of the Dog(e)".

There is active development in Dogecoin. https://github.com/dogecoin/dogecoin/tree/1.14-dev

The reason people say there is not is because they do not understand that the "master" branch remains stable so people don't accidentally deploy work in progress.

One of the three core developers commented on this recently at https://twitter.com/JRossNicoll/status/950887010083987458

Dogecoin is always worth a pump, and Chinese New Year is coming up (Year of the Dog) plus developers recently confirmed that they cleared a major hurdle in producing Version 1.14 of the client.

OP has been criticised for mentioning the small value of coins without reference to the market cap, but the psychological effect of small-value coins is real. More fun to gamble on 100000 DOGE than 0.06 BTC and small investors also avoid being burned by high transaction fees.