Doge is a coin running on its own proof of work (POW) blockchain, and the network is run by miners. More specifically, the dog coin is an auxiliary workload proof (auxpow) cryptocurrency with unlimited supply. There are 5 billion dog coins issued and circulated every year.
Dogecoin has been used to pay for tickets and merchandise for the Dallas Mavericks of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Major League Baseball (MLB) team the Oakland A’s has also accepted Dogecoin as payment for tickets to its ballpark. In addition, DOGE has been directed toward charitable donations, including to the Jamaican national bobsleigh team and also to build wells in Kenya during a water crisis.
Wondering how to get some DOGE, or how to invest in Dogecoin? Dogecoin mining is one way to get a hold of Dogecoin, though you can also buy, sell and trade DOGE.
Dogecoin miners have two options: They can either go it alone, which is recommended for megaoperations, or become part of what is known as a mining pool in which multiple miners contribute their hashing power and therefore share in the block rewards.
In 2014, Dogecoin was merge-mined with Litecoin, allowing Litecoin mining pools to also mine DOGE at the same time. Like Litecoin, Dogecoin uses the Scrypt hashing function. Dogecoin’s algorithm is less tricky to mine than Bitcoin’s SHA-256; therefore, blocks are completed much more quickly.
Dogecoin’s average block time is about one minute vs. Bitcoin’s 10-minute block time. The blockchain can see upward of 50,000 DOGE transactions completed per day.