Everyone has long been accustomed to the fact that cryptocurrencies are quite serious projects in the world of finance, which in the vast majority of cases are designed to move quickly to the top of the market. The developers of the new coins are sweating over in order to attract the attention of the investors to their cryptocurrency. They embed the latest technologies in the blockchain network, use clever algorithms and, in the end, simply actively promote their product. Many cryptocurrencies manage to shoot off and become desirable for investment, trading or mining. But not all developers profess such a serious approach. One day, two friends decided just to make fun, and as a result of their common joke, a new Dogecoin cryptocurrency appeared.
What is Dogecoin?
In 2010, Atsuko Sato, a kindergarten teacher, posted photos of Kabosu, a Shiba Inu dog, on the Internet, which the woman saved and sheltered. In one photo, a dog was looking towards the camera with raised eyebrows. It became the basis of the Doge meme.
In 2013, the meme was recalled by Jackson Palmer, an Adobe marketing employee in Sydney. He did not believe in cryptocurrency platforms, and to ridicule the hype around Bitcoin, he posted a funny post on Twitter: “I am investing in Dogecoin, I am sure that this will be the next hit.”
Palmer received several responses to the message, which spurred the development of the idea. A week later, Jackson bought the dogecoin.com domain. The idea piqued the interest of Billy Markus, a programmer from Portland. He contacted Palmer and set about building the Dogecoin (DOGE) platform. It took Billy Markus only three hours to create Dogecoin cryptocurrency. Almost seven years later, its capitalization is exceeding $ 30 billion, and even the founder wonders if it is worthy of such an assessment. Markus wanted his cryptocurrency to be available to the general public — unlike Bitcoin, which history was accompanied by the mystery of an anonymous creator and attracted a small niche group of miners.
When developing the cryptocurrency, the team took Litecoin as a basis, so Dogecoin has similarities with it, i.e. the Scrypt algorithm.
What is Dogecoin Mining?
How hard is it to mine Dogecoin? DOGE miners will also be happy to know that even on a “mossy” home computer compared to mega-powerful facilities will suit Dogecoin mining. People who are not very advanced in programming can become owners of this currency and you can get Dogecoin for performing simple tasks, such as entering characters from an image, the so-called captchas on ordinary data portals.
Dogecoin has a number of advantages that allow it to be ranked 5th among the most popular cryptocurrencies:
- Speed of transactions and block decryption.
- Ability to get free coins on special faucet sites.
- Availability of currency and ease of purchase.
- A relatively stable rate with the ability to automatically stabilize. Even if there is an influx of miners, this will not cause a strong drawdown. Due to the lower risk of significant financial losses, Dogecoin even received the name “children’s money”, this is the best option for beginners.
Mining Comparison
Dogecoin was initially created as an analogue of Litecoin. It appeared two years later, so let’s highlight its main differences from its predecessor, i.e. Litecoin:
- One unit is generated in 1 minute, which is 250% faster than in the case of Litecoin. As a result, the transaction is confirmed faster, and full confirmation takes up to six minutes. By comparison, for Litecoin it takes 15 minutes and for Bitcoin it takes 60 minutes.
- The complexity is recalculated every four hours or every 240 blocks. For this reason, Dogecoin is sensitive to high miner activity, which can lead to a short-term increase in the value of cryptocurrency.
- The initial number of coins was 100 billion, but over time the idea of a fixed amount had to be abandoned. Subsequently, 5% annual inflation was set, so today 130 billion coins have been mined and five billion new Dogecoins appear every year.
Ways of mining Dogecoin
Solo mining
At the dawn of the development of cryptocurrencies, solo mining was the most popular method of mining cryptocurrency, and Bitcoin could be mined with just one video card on the PC. With the increasing complexity of the network, this method has lost its relevance and gave rise to the development of collective pools, which over time completely replaced solo mining. Despite this, solo mining still offers the largest mining income, since the reward for the mined block goes entirely to the miner, but it requires knowledge of the features of this mining method and compliance with certain conditions.
Solo mining can be done using special solo pools or by creating your own pool. The second option is suitable for users with a good knowledge of IT technologies, and the first one is suitable for any miner.
Solo mining has one significant drawback: the computing power of one participant is not able to compete significantly with large pools and data centers aimed at mining popular cryptocurrencies with high network complexity.
Dogecoin is still open to solo mining, which allows the miner to withdraw the entire amount of the reward at once. Everything is simple: the more powerful the computer is, the more coins it will bring. But electricity costs will also increase. For this reason, cryptocurrency mining in 2021 is becoming less attractive. But for Dogecoin it is still not so complicated, although it is interesting now mainly for geek-enthusiasts.
You can mine Dogecoin on the processor, a video card, and even on the Raspberry Pi platform.
The processor may cause Dogecoin mining difficulty to some extent because the distribution of processes on many small computing units is better for hashing than four or eight large ones in the CPU. Therefore, it is better to use GPU power, i.e. video cards from ATi and NVidia for mining Dogecoins. They give out much more gigahash per second, which is a very critical condition when mining cryptocurrency in 2021.
Pool mining
A rational decision, which is increasingly being made by fans of Dogecoin mining, is to join the pool. Difficulties arise when choosing a suitable association. It should be large enough for blocks to be mined more often. You also need to deal with the features:
- Accrual of remuneration;
- Withdrawal of earnings.
Since the Scrypt is used as a Dogecoin mining algorithm, it becomes possible to check new hashes together with Litecoin, and this opportunity is provided by LitecoinPool.org and Coinotron.com. There are also proven mining pools where Doge is selected as a separate option:
Zcool.ca
170 cryptocurrencies are available, payments every 4 hours with withdrawal to crypto wallets, VISA / MasterCard cards and Yobit, Poloniex, Bittrex crypto exchanges. For large clients, additional rental of facilities at NiceHash and MiningRigRentals is available.
If you plan to mine Doge on a video card, for more efficient work, the pool offers the CGMiner program with GPU overclocking and hash rate fine-tuning functions.
Mining.securepayment.cc
It is targeting a non-leader group of altcoins such as, for example, Peercoin and VERGE. Commission is from 1 to 5% depending on the popularity of the coin, payments are made within 24 hours only to crypto wallets.
If you find other sites, then we urge you to be careful when cooperating with them. The pool must be constantly updated and it must have its own support service.
Cloud mining
The mining process becomes more complicated every year due to the embedded program code of the blockchain. In fact, the mining market has moved into an oligopoly stage, where several of the largest pools are fighting for mining. The search for blocks has become so complicated that entire factories are being built with equipment for calculations 24 hours a day.
Of course, not everyone can afford to open their own factory next to their home. That is why small enterprises are being created, aimed at increasing capacity through external investment on a regular basis. A person works without investing in ASICs and video cards and receives money thanks to cloud mining. This is a phenomenon when the existing capacity is leased for a certain period. The investor makes a profit from the acquired facilities, according to their volume. The entire reward is divided among the contributors, depending on their investment. After the agreed period, the enterprises simply continue to use hardware, and the investor remains in profit thanks to the capacity of the plant.
Of course, it is impossible to earn a lot without investing in cloud mining. However, enterprises are engaged in issuing bonuses to visitors in order to advertise their own projects. Further, the same bonuses allow you to invest in the acquisition of capacities. The main goal is to make money with investments. Only the size of the investment is not required to be colossal, ordinary average people are allowed to mine.
Advantages and features of free Dogecoin cloud mining:
- The organization of mining lies on the side of the equipment lessor;
- Nobody requires real tenant details;
- Rational use of equipment and energy resources. In modern data centers, equipment comes directly from manufacturers, which allows you to significantly save on its purchase. The farms are located in countries with low energy costs, which reduces operating costs;
- Quick start. Most Dogecoin cloud mining services offer inexpensive starter contracts in the range of $ 5–10;
- Availability of referral and bonus programs, seasonal discounts and other special offers. Using them allows you to start Dogecoin сloud mining on even more favorable terms.
- Huge selection of sites. Choose a site with the most favorable conditions and a high level of service.
What do you need to start mining Dogecoin?
Hardware
Equipment selection is a key step, especially for a beginner. As of 2021, there are three types of Dogecoin mining hardware: ASIC miners, video cards and processors. In view of the constantly growing hash rate, there are only two relevant options: on ASICs and video cards.
How to mine Dogecoin with CPU
This option requires a powerful central processing unit with a large number of cores. Be sure to download software for this type of hardware. The setting is carried out by editing the batch file. The user enters the pool address, the worker name, and a password.
It is worth admitting that mining Dogecoin on processors has run out of steam, so you can consider this option as an experiment, you cannot count on an impressive profit.
How to mine with Dogecoin with GPU
First, it should be noted that Radeon devices are more efficient than NVIDIA graphics cards. This point of view is argued by the special architecture of AMD’s hardware. These video cards have a large number of shader units. In terms of performance, they are slightly inferior to competitors, but the quantity is important for the production of cryptocurrency.
Use Afterburner or Trixx to change GPU frequencies. For some algorithms, it is necessary to decrease, and not increase the frequencies. Script belongs to their number. As a result, the noise level as well as the heating of the device will noticeably decrease. The Scrypt algorithm is a catalyst for graphics cards to be 100% loaded, which can cause their overheating. Some models can continue to work when heated to 95 degrees. Control the fan speed with SGMiner.
ASIC mining
The Dogecoin algorithm is the Scrypt hashing algorithm (just like Litecoin), which is supported by ASIC miners such as Innosilicon A6 + LTCMaster, FusionSilicon X6 Miner, Antminer L3 + and BW L21. The barrier to entry for ASIC mining is approximately $ 300. This will be enough to purchase the time-tested Bitmain Antminer L3 ++ with a hashrate of 596 Mh / s and start mining Dogecoin.
The best option is Antminer L3 +, released by the Chinese company Bitmain. On the official website, it costs about $ 1,500, but not everyone can buy equipment, all this is due to the lack of high-quality integrated circuits. To buy an ASIC several times cheaper, search for L3 + on ebay and all kinds of free message boards.
Software
Miner programs are designed specifically for mining specific (or several) virtual currencies. All programs are freely available on the web. In addition, there are programs that allow you to simultaneously mine on a processor and a video card.
Dogecoin mining software means standard software such as ccMiner, CudaMiner for NVIDIA or GUIMiner for AMD Radeon / VEGA.
In order to run Dogecoin mining on the video card at maximum speed, stay tuned for the driver package update of Radeon Crimson ReLive Edition for AMD and CUDA-toolkit for NVidia.
Crypto wallet
Dogecoin provides access to the official software wallet. It can be installed, configured and managed on devices running Windows, Linux, macOS, Android.
Users are offered 2 options for Dogecoin software wallets:
- Dogecoin Core is a “heavy” program that requires downloading the entire blockchain to the device. The software takes up more space on the computer. The official Core software wallet provides customers with security while mining Dogecoin.
- MultiDoge is a “lightweight” program that does not require loading all blocks of the network (like Core), since synchronization occurs with remote servers.
Select an available type of wallet for storing coins and download the program. Open it and follow the instructions of the installation wizard.
For storage and transactions with Doge cryptocurrency, there is Dogechain online wallet. This wallet is simpler, since it does not require installation and configuration of the program on a PC, but it is less secure than the previous versions.
Is Dogecoin mining profitable?
When considering Dogecoin mining profitability, you need to take into account the opinion of analysts. Many of them believe that the coin should maintain its performance this year with possible corrections, but without significant growth.
Why did it become so popular? It can be mined on almost any personal computer. Users noted that it takes about 3 minutes to mine one block. DOGE coins are sometimes given out by sites for free or credited for completing a simple task. The future of digital “dogs” is optimistic, as the developers are conducting an active advertising campaign. Therefore, it makes sense to spend time on DOGE mining.
The Conclusion on Dogecoin Mining
The altcoin price is too volatile and the prices can quickly rise and fall, thus it is difficult to draw up a long-term strategy or predict when exactly the equipment will pay off.
Therefore, it should be kept in mind that altcoin mining is a lottery. The experts recommend mining of the first 20 coins by capitalization, for example, the same Ethereum Classic, Monero, Litecoin, Zcash, DASH, Bitcoin Gold, including Dogecoin. It is risky to mine “no-names” as today they seem to be the new Bitcoin, and tomorrow they will not cost anything and will not allow you to recoup your investment.
