cryptocurrency Meme-inspired Dogecoin (DOGE) is now officially the second largest Proof-of-work (PoW) cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization, following the Ethereum network merger on September 15.
Bitcoin (BTC), of course, is still far ahead of Dogecoin’s market cap of $7.83 billion.although the memecoin is still comfortably ahead of the third PoW cryptocurrency, Ethereum Classic (ETC) (with a market cap of $4.69 billion), Litecoin (LTC) ($4.01 billion) and Monero (XMR) ($2.65 billion ).
A Dogecoin fan seemed to disbelieve in Dogecoin’s rise to become the second largest PoW cryptocurrency, stating “who would have thought this would happen. Congratulations #Dogefam.”
But not everyone took it well. A Twitter user responding to a tweet about the news wondered how people could take the crypto industry seriously when a memecoin was so close to the top spot.emphasizing the need to remove “useless coins” from public view.
But Dogecoin could also soon compete against ETHPoW, the Ethereum PoW hard fork chain that will continue to mine, according to the official ETHPoW Twitter account, which is currently priced at $13.64.
Ethereum’s transition to PoS may have added pressure on PoW-driven cryptocurrency networks to transition to a more sustainable consensus mechanism.
In a statement to Cointelegraph, Lachlan Feeney, the founder and CEO of Australia-based blockchain development agency Labrys, said “the pressure is now on ‘bitcoin now to justify the PoW system in the long run’.”.
He added that “the reluctance to carry out its own transition to PoS will be huge”.
For its part, the Dogecoin Foundation has been considering a transition from Dogecoin to proof-of-stake after first hinting at the change in September 2021which was introduced by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who is also an advisor to the Dogecoin Foundation.
In December 2021, the Dogecoin Foundation published its “Dogecoin roadmap”, which proposed to build a “community staking” version of Dogecoin that resembles PoS.
“Such a version would allow all Dogecoin users to stake their DOGE and get extra tokens for supporting the network”said the Dogecoin Foundation.
Nevertheless, little progress has been made since then, as it still appears to be in “proposal” status according to the Dogecoin website.
DOGE is currently priced at USD 0.06 at the time of writing this article.
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