Question is how many developers are currently involved to make it happen in a reasonable time frame? DOGE needs more active development
at the moment, no dev, they have all canceled their participation to DOGE. You can also find a youtube video with the creator of DOGE saying that he will never continue dev DOGE. make a search on youtube
And it's perhaps impossible to change what once made it so strong in a trustworthy way. As you said it is just a meme and it is like a stigma and nobody would really believe DOGE could compete with the big ones on a technical level. And ultimately, that is the truth for now (and might remain forever).
Absolutely! Problem is we would need people (actually super skilled people) think the same way as you and me. And for them there are a lot of other opportunities where there is money to be made. This community would need to gather a good amount of funds to attract devs.