The meme-inspired cryptocurrency Dogecoin (DOGE) is now officially the second largest Proof-of-Work (PoW)-based currency by market cap, following Thursday’s Proof-of-Stake (PoS) update of the Ethereum network. .
Of course, bitcoin (BTC) is miles ahead of Dogecoin, which has a market capitalization of $7.83 billion, although the widely followed memecoin is still comfortably ahead of the third PoW-based cryptocurrency. of $4.69 billion, Litecoin (LTC), at $4.01 billion, and Monero (XMR), at $2.65 billion.
Dogecoin fans seemed in disbelief at Dogecoin’s rise to become the second largest PoW-based currency, being confirmed “Who would have thought this would happen? Congratulations #Dogfam”.
However, not everyone took this well. A Twitter user who responded to a tweet about the news asked how people could take the cryptocurrency industry seriously with memecoin so close to the top spot, stressing the need to remove ‘unnecessary cryptocurrencies’ from the view of the public.
Dogecoin may soon be in competition with ETHPoW (ETHW), which is from an Ethereum PoW hard fork that will continue mining, according to the official Twitter account of ETHW, which is currently priced at $13.64, according to CoinMarketCap.
Ethereum’s transition to PoS may put additional pressure on PoW-powered cryptocurrency networks to move to a more sustainable consensus mechanism.
In a statement to Cointelegraph, Lachlan Feeney, Founder and CEO of Labrys, an Australia-based blockchain development agency, said that “the pressure is now” on the Bitcoin network to protect the PoW system for the long term.
He also said that “the reluctance to transfer itself to PoS will be huge.”
Meanwhile, the Dogecoin Foundation considered switching from Dogecoin to Proof-of-Stake after the first hint of the change in September 2021, suggested by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who is also an advisor to the Dogecoin Foundation.
In December 2021, the Dogecoin Foundation released its Dogecoin Roadmap, which proposed developing a so-called “community stake” version of Dogecoin that would be similar to PoS.
Also read: Proof-of-Stake vs. Proof of Work: Understanding the Differences
“Such a release would enable all Dogecoin users to stake their DOGE and receive additional tokens to support the network,” the Dogecoin Foundation said.
However, little progress has been made since then, as it appears to still be in a “proposed” state according to the Dogecoin website.
DOGE is currently valued at $0.06 at the time of writing.
