Dogecoin Is Now the Second Largest Proof of Work Cryptocurrency

As a result of the Ethereum Merge, Dogecoin is now only second to Bitcoin in terms of market capitalization among proof-of-work cryptocurrencies.

After the Ethereum network upgraded to proof-of-stake on Thursday, the cryptocurrency Dogecoin (DOGE), which was inspired by memes, is now officially the second largest proof-of-work (PoW) cryptocurrency in terms of market cap. This change came about as a result of the upgrade.

Dogecoin, which has a market cap of $7.83 billion, is still comfortably ahead of the third-place PoW cryptocurrency Ethereum Classic (ETC), which has a market cap of $4.69 billion, Litecoin (LTC) and Monero (XMR), each of which has a market cap of approximately $2.65 billion and $4.01 billion respectively. This is despite the fact that Bitcoin (BTC) still has a market cap that is miles ahead of Dogecoin.

When asked about Dogecoin’s meteoric rise to become the second largest Proof-of-Work cryptocurrency, a fan of the cryptocurrency appeared to be in disbelief, saying, “who would have thought that this would happen. Congrats #Dogefam.”

However, not everyone agreed with that assessment. One user on Twitter responded to a tweet about the news by asking how people could take the cryptocurrency industry seriously with a memecoin so close to the top spot. This user stressed the importance of hiding “useless coins” from the public view.

According to the official Twitter account of the ETHW, which is currently priced at $13.64 according to CoinMarketCap, Dogecoin may also soon find itself competing against ETHPoW (ETHW), the Ethereum PoW hard fork chain that will continue mining. This information comes from the official Twitter account of the ETHW.

It’s possible that Ethereum’s move to PoS has increased the amount of pressure on other cryptocurrency networks powered by PoW to make the switch to a more sustainable consensus mechanism.

Lachlan Feeney, the founder and CEO of Labrys, a blockchain development agency based in Australia, said in a statement to Cointelegraph that “the pressure is on” Bitcoin now to justify the PoW system over the long term.

He added that “hesitation to conduct its own transformation to Proof of Stake will be enormous.”

During this time, the Dogecoin Foundation has been mulling over the possibility of shifting Dogecoin to a proof-of-stake system. The foundation is advised by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who is also a member of the Dogecoin Foundation. In September 2021, the Dogecoin Foundation first hinted at the possibility of such a shift.

In December of 2021, the Dogecoin Foundation announced the release of the Dogecoin Trailmap, which included a proposal to develop a “community staking” version of Dogecoin that was analogous to PoS.

According to what was reported by the Dogecoin Foundation, “Such a version would enable all Dogecoin users to stake their DOGE and get extra tokens for supporting the network.”

However, considering that it still appears to be in the status of a “proposal” according to the Dogecoin website, very little development has taken place since that time.

At the time of this writing, one Dogecoin can be purchased for $0.06 USD.

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