15, the meme-inspired cryptocurrency Dogecoin (DOGE) is now officially the second largest proof-of-work crypto in terms of market capitalization.
Bitcoin (BTC) of course remains far ahead of Dogecoin's $7.83 billion market cap. Although the popular meme coin is still comfortably ahead of the third-place PoW cryptocurrency Ethereum Classic (with a market cap of $4.69 billion).
One Dogecoin fan looked surprised by Dogecoin's rise to become the second largest PoW cryptocurrency, stating “who would have predicted this. Congratulations, #Dogefam.”
However, it was not well received by everyone. One Twitter user, in response to a tweet announcing the development, questioned how people could take the crypto sector seriously with a memecoin. He emphasizes the need of removing "useless coins" from public display.
But, according to the official Twitter account of the ETHPoW, which is currently trading at $13.64, Dogecoin may soon find itself fighting against ETHPoW - the Ethereum PoW hard fork chain that will continue mining.
The transition of ETH to PoS may have increased pressure on PoW-powered cryptocurrency networks to switch to a more sustainable consensus mechanism.
Lachlan Feeney, the founder and CEO of the Australian blockchain development firm Labrys, stated that “the pressure is now on Bitcoin to justify the PoW mechanism in the long run.” He also stated that “the reluctance to carry out its own shift to PoS will be enormous.”
Meanwhile, the dogecoin foundation has been considering a transition of Dogecoin to a proof-of-stake mechanism after initially hinting at the shift in September 2021. This was proposed by Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum and adviser to the Dogecoin Foundation.
The Dogecoin Foundation announced their "Dogecoin Trailmap" in December 2021, proposing to build a Dogecoin "community staking" version similar to PoS.
However, little progress has been made since then, with the Dogecoin website indicating that it is still in "proposal" status.
At the time of writing, the price of Dogecoin was trading at $0.059, down 2.2% in the past 24 hours and 5.5% in the last seven days.
Read also: Fight for Top Ethereum POW Hard Fork Token Between ETF and ETHW
