Dogecoin is 1 million times easier to mine than Bitcoin. Even so the ones who make a huge profit mining cryptocurrency have entire rigs dedicated to mining. So although you may profit somewhat, don’t expect to become the next Dogecoin millionaire through mining unless you’ve invested in a good rig.
Another problem is that, nowadays, you can’t directly mine Dogecoin. Sadly, that way is relegated to history. To protect itself from a 51% attack, Dogecoin (DOGE) merged with Litecoin (LTC). Now, it is virtually impossible to directly mine Dogecoin, as a price paid for the network’s security. When you do mine, you are usually mining for something else and that cryptocurrency is converted into DOGE.
Although you’re not directly mining for doge, it’s more convenient than having to go to an exchange and trade. When a mining program has the option to mine for DOGE, it makes it so that you mine another currency, like Ethereum, which is then exchanged for DOGE automatically.
Cryptocurrencies, like their mineral counterparts in gold and silver, are subject to be mined. Mining, in the crypto world, is using your computer to solve complex algorithms, namely cryptographic hash puzzles. This allows miners to create new blocks, or data where the network is recorded. This process is called Proof-of-Work, and this is how many of the older cryptocurrency networks, like Bitcoin and DOGE, have functioned. Miners are, essentially, auditors, verifying network legitimacy. They are rewarded for this work with cryptocurrency tokens.
As you can imagine, this requires a lot of electrical power, since the computational work required to solve the algorithms is immense. Though the climate change impact is often overblown, the Bitcoin network, which is the oldest technology, still requires as much power as a casino city like Las Vegas. While mining for other coins isn’t as notorious for energy consumption, you should still keep in mind your electricity bill when trying to mine.
Dogecoin, since it’s merged with Litecoin, uses Auxiliary Proof-of-Work, meaning that it uses the Proof-of-Work validation of LTC for its own blockchain. By mining LTC, you are given DOGE, which is the ‘most direct’ way to mine DOGE, although you would need to have incredible resources in order to do so. Mining DOGE this way, for the average person, is impractical.
The newer protocols like Cardano, Polkadot and upcoming Ethereum 2.0 will function with a Proof-of-Stake model. This is meant to tackle many of the problems of Proof-of-Work, like the power needed to validate blocks. Proof-of-Stake operates on having mining power based on tokens a user owns and doesn’t need the vast computational power of older generation blockchain mining.