Few cryptos have attracted more controversy, hype and humor than (Elon Musk’s beloved) Dogecoin (DOGE). Yet, against the backdrop of jokes, memes and skepticism, Dogecoin has not so quietly risen to the top ten cryptocurrencies by market cap. Importantly for crypto miners or those considering this trade, Dogecoin is among the most profitable coins to mine.
Dogecoin was launched in December 2013 as a fork of Luckycoin, and boasts both Bitcoin and Litecoin in its lineage.
The coin is the only mineable cryptocurrency among the top ten cryptos, aside from the leading duo — Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Dogecoin is considerably faster and easier to mine than Bitcoin. It also has a lower mining difficulty — as measured by the hash power required to solve a new block — than Ethereum, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash or just about any other mineable cryptocurrency in the top 100 by market cap. In short, knowing how to mine Dogecoin might be the safest route to profitability for a crypto miner in 2022.
How Does Dogecoin Mining Work?
The Dogecoin mining process is quite similar to that of Bitcoin or other proof of work (PoW) blockchains. Miners try to solve a computational puzzle by using the hashing power of their computers in the race to add a new block of transactions to the chain.
The miner’s reward for each solved block is 10,000 DOGE (about $700 as of the time of writing). Unlike Bitcoin mining, Dogecoin doesn’t use reward-halving in its current mining mechanism. However, halving did apply in the early years of the coin’s operation. Before January 2015, the miner’s reward was halved quite frequently — once every 100,000 blocks, which worked out to about once every 69 days.
The last reward halving occurred in January 2015. The coin’s governance rules specified that there would be no more halving after that date.
How Long Does It Take to Mine One Dogecoin?
The Dogecoin chain is configured to produce one new block of transactions per minute. This is ten times faster than Bitcoin’s block time of around 10 minutes. In practical terms, this means more frequent rewards from Dogecoin mining, a nice feature for those who like frequent — even if small — wins.
At the rate of one block per minute, the Dogecoin network adds 1,440 new blocks per day, producing 14.4 million DOGE (around $1 million) in miner rewards on a daily basis. Given that there’s no more reward halving scheduled for the future, this daily amount of DOGE will continue to be steadily added to the coin’s total supply, which currently stands at around 132 billion DOGE.
The coin also doesn’t have any supply capping, meaning that the 14.4 million daily DOGE will be available to mining enthusiasts for the life of the coin.
How Difficult Is It to Mine Dogecoin?
The difficulty score is the standard measure used to estimate the computational requirements for mining a coin. It specifies the number of hashes a machine needs to produce in order to solve a new block. Dogecoin currently features the lowest difficulty score out of all the leading mineable cryptocurrencies. This means that mining a new Dogecoin block will require less computational power than mining a block on any other reasonably well-known chain.
The table below shows the current difficulty scores, in ascending order, for all the mineable coins in the top 50 cryptocurrencies by market cap.
The mining difficulty scores as of June 27, 2022, for the top 50 coins (Data Source: WhatToMine)
While the difficulty scores may fluctuate over time, as of now, in mid-2022, the results in the table clearly indicate that Dogecoin is by far the easiest notable coin to mine.
How to Mine Dogecoin
There are three main ways to mine Dogecoin:
1. Solo mining
2. Joining a mining pool
3. Using a cloud mining provider
Each of these options has its own merits, although solo mining without a very powerful mining rig has become impractical due to the increased competition on the chain.
1. Solo Mining
To perform solo Dogecoin mining, you join the Dogecoin network as an individual node and use your mining rig to solve transaction blocks. If you do manage to add a new block to the chain, you’ll receive the 10,000 DOGE mining reward without having to share it with anyone else. This is the main advantage of mining solo.
The key disadvantage of mining Dogecoin individually is the infrequency and inconsistency of rewards. Solo miners compete with mining pools, entities that combine the computing resources of a large number of miners to solve new blocks on the network. The combined hash power enjoyed by the mining pools puts solo miners at a disadvantage.
As a solo miner, if you don’t have a powerful machine, you might end up never getting a block reward. Even with a powerful mining rig, you would likely have to wait for weeks or months on average between your block rewards.
2. Dogecoin Mining Pools
Dogecoin mining pools represent a convenient and flexible alternative to mining solo. They pool resources from multiple miners to increase the chance of solving a block of transactions. When a member of the pool manages to mine a block, the 10,000 DOGE reward is split between all the pool participants.
Each member receives a share of the reward proportional to the hash power contributed. Thus, as is the case with solo mining, it pays to have as powerful a rig as possible when joining a pool. Mining pools retain a small percentage of the reward, typically anything between 0.5% and 4%, for providing their services.
For miners without powerful rigs, mining pools might be the only realistic option for earning rewards. Naturally, rigs without significant hash power are likely to earn very little in any mining pool. However, you’ll at least have some funds flowing in on a consistent basis. In contrast, mining solo without a high-end rig will likely lead to no rewards earned at all.
For miners with powerful machines, pool mining may be a good option for earning rewards in a more stable way. Such miners can still be successful, on occasions, via solo mining. However, mining pools represent a way to earn rewards with a much higher frequency, even if in smaller bits.
Let’s say a miner with a high-spec rig manages to earn a full block reward of 10,000 DOGE once a month on average. By joining a pool, they can earn that amount consistently in smaller chunks on a daily basis over the same period.
In other words, joining a pool might not increase the overall profitability of your mining activity over a long-term period, but it will definitely allow you to earn a more consistent income.
As a rule, the larger the pool you join, the more frequent and consistent your rewards.
Largest Dogecoin Pools
There are dozens of large or medium-sized pools mining Dogecoin. However, just a few large pools typically solve the majority of the blocks on the network. Currently, the two largest ones among them are ViaBTC and LitecoinPool.org.
he German-based ViaBTC is the current leader on the network by the number of recently mined blocks. If you’re looking for the most consistent reward schedule, this pool could be a great option. The pool offers merged mining of Dogecoin coupled with Litecoin mining. With merged mining, your rig’s hash power is used to mine two cryptocurrencies at the same time. By mining Dogecoin and Litecoin in this way, you increase your earnings without having to contribute any additional hash power.
Currently, the second-largest pool on the Dogecoin chain by the number of blocks mined is litecoinpool.org, another good option for miners looking for high reward consistency.
As its name suggests, this pool is largely dedicated to mining Litecoin. Dogecoin mining is offered in the merged mining format, together with Litecoin.
A big advantage of litecoinpool.org is the absence of any fees. Among the leading Dogecoin pools, litecoinpool.org is the only one with zero fees.
3. Dogecoin Cloud Mining
The third option for mining Dogecoin is using a cloud mining provider. Under the cloud mining model, you simply pay a monthly or yearly fee to a service provider that “rents” you computing hash power.
The cloud provider mines cryptocurrency for you in exchange for the fee, and gives you a share of the mining profit commensurate with your rented hash power.
Cloud mining doesn’t require you to own any mining equipment, a big advantage compared to solo mining or pool mining. In essence, you simply pay a fee with the expectation of positive returns from the cloud provider.
Naturally, your earnings might fluctuate, depending on the network activity and mining difficulty on the Dogecoin chain. While the fee you pay to the cloud mining provider is usually fixed, your returns are normally variable.
The major drawback of Dogecoin cloud mining is the scant choice of reliable service providers. Many cloud mining providers don’t support Dogecoin mining, and prefer to concentrate on Bitcoin or Ethereum mining.
Among the more well-known companies that offer Dogecoin cloud mining are NiceHash and Genesis Mining. Dogecoin mining is supported on these platforms in the merged mining format together with Litecoin.
Things You Need to Mine Dogecoin
Dogecoin Mining Hardware
With regard to the hardware required for Dogecoin mining, you have, in theory, three main options:
1. Using your computer’s processor, or central processing unit (CPU)
2. Using your computer’s graphics card, or graphicsal processing unit (GPU)
3. Using a dedicated application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) machine, a computer specifically designed for mining cryptocurrency
Mining Dogecoin using CPU — The most basic way to mine Dogecoin is by using your computer’s CPU. However, in 2022, mining Dogecoin with a CPU, even a powerful one, is likely to be an arduous chore with little chance of success. Although Dogecoin’s mining difficulty is much lower than that of other leading PoW coins, competition among miners on the chain has intensified over the last couple of years.
Theoretically, you can still use your CPU for Dogecoin mining. However, most miners are interested in knowing how to mine Dogecoin profitably. Unfortunately, no CPU is going to be up to that task.
Dogecoin Mining via GPU — Your chances of success are much higher with a machine fitted with a powerful GPU. However, the intense competition among miners has already made profitable GPU mining quite difficult as well. For example, one of the most powerful mining GPUs on the market, the AMD Radeon VII, will only allow you to break even — that is, to earn zero profit per day with the current estimates of Dogecoin mining profitability.
Mining Dogecoin via ASIC — Using an ASIC machine gives you the best chance to derive profit from Dogecoin mining. ASIC machines are powerful computing systems built solely for the purpose of crypto mining. They’ve been popular in Bitcoin mining for many years.
Unfortunately, if you own a Bitcoin ASIC rig, you won’t be able to use it for Dogecoin mining. This is because Bitcoin and Dogecoin use different hashing algorithms. Bitcoin uses the SHA-256 algorithm, while Dogecoin (similar to Litecoin) is based on Scrypt hashing.
ASIC machines used for Litecoin mining are compatible with Dogecoin. In fact, as you might have already noticed, Dogecoin is typically mined in a merged format with Litecoin.
Key Factors When Choosing Dogecoin Mining Hardware
There are two hardware specifications that will affect your mining rig’s profitability – its hash rate and its power consumption. The hash rate refers to the number of hashes the machine is capable of generating per second when mining a specific coin, in this case DOGE. The power consumption is the amount of electricity the machine is estimated to use in watts per hour.
ASIC machines feature vastly higher hash rates than even the most advanced GPUs. At the same time, they naturally consume much more power. ASICs also cost significantly more than computers with high-spec GPUs. All of these factors, along with estimates of profitability, need to be taken into account when choosing suitable hardware.
A number of online calculators can help you estimate current Dogecoin mining profitability by entering the estimated hash rate and power consumption of the machine you’re considering. One such popular calculator is WhatToMine. In addition to the hash rate and power, it lets you specify your current electricity costs and a number of other parameters for granular profitability estimates.
According to this calculator, a high-spec ASIC machine, such as Bitmain Antminer L7 9500Mh/s, may generate a profit of around $10 a day from Dogecoin mining. This estimate assumes electricity costs of around $0.15 per kilowatt-hour (KWh).
Naturally, depending on your location, electricity costs might be lower or higher than this figure, which will have an effect on profitability estimates. Another key determinant, of course, is the current market price of DOGE.
While these estimates may fluctuate significantly on a daily and even hourly basis, they do provide some general guidance with regard to the specific piece of hardware to choose for your Dogecoin mining activities.
Dogecoin Mining Software
After setting up your mining hardware, you’ll need to download and use specific software to mine Dogecoin. There are many software packages that work well for Dogecoin mining. However, not all packages support all three hardware types — CPU, GPU and ASIC.
If you still cling to the increasingly obsolete idea of Dogecoin mining with a CPU, CPU Miner is one of the most commonly used software packages for this purpose. Another popular software, EasyMiner, supports both CPU-based and GPU-based Dogecoin mining.
Other popular Dogecoin mining software packages are CGMiner, MultiMiner and Cudo Miner. Until recently, CGMiner supported both GPU and ASIC mining. The latest version has now removed support for GPUs and only works for ASIC machines. MultiMiner works for GPU and ASIC mining, while Cudo Miner supports all three hardware types — CPU, GPU and ASIC.
Dogecoin Wallet
Besides the requisite hardware and software, you ‘ll also need a Dogecoin wallet, used to receive and store your rewards.
If you prefer to use a software wallet, Dogecoin offers its original wallets — MultiDoge and Dogecoin Core. Other popular choices include MetaMask, Trust Wallet and Atomic Wallet. For those who prefer the security of a cold wallet, the two leading hardware wallet manufacturers, Trezor and Ledger, both support Dogecoin.
Is Dogecoin Mining Profitable?
Mining profitability estimates are always going to fluctuate wildly. Ultimately, the market price of DOGE, mining difficulty and the specifications of your rig will be the key determinants.
As of mid-2022, Dogecoin mining can still be profitable if you use a powerful ASIC machine. Joining a large mining pool is also advisable if you want to improve the consistency and stability of your rewards. The profitability of Dogecoin mining is further improved by the merged mining model, in which your machine’s hash power is used both for Dogecoin and Litecoin mining.
If you have a powerful hardware setup, mine away while the adorable canine remains one of the very few potentially profitable coins to mine.
