Crypto mining has been around since the invention of Bitcoin. The origins of the phrase are not known, but the concept is clear: you provide your hardware’s power to run the network and you get rewarded for that.
While the concept is simple, the technology behind is not. In essence, you are supplying processing power to the network required to verify transactions, and for that, you get awarded with tokens. Sometimes, it is easier to explain what zignaly copy trading is than how to mine crypto.
Among the many cryptocurrencies that can be mined, one of them is Dogecoin. Even though the coin was released in 2013 as a joke, it quickly managed to rise and started to compete with the big players on the market. As Bitcoin mining is getting more difficult, many people resort to mining other cryptocurrencies, and today I am going to talk to you about how to mine Dogecoin.
- Is Dogecoin Mining Still Profitable?
- Mining Basics
- Types of Mining
- Requirements for Mining Dogecoin
2.1 Hardware
2.2 Software - Where to Mine Dogecoin?
- Software For Dogecoin Mining
- Cloud Mining Options
- Profitability
- Conclusion
Is Dogecoin Mining Still Profitable?
I want to stress that mining Dogecoin still makes sense. People mine this coin. More than that, thanks to 2021 strong growth of the Dogecoin price, mining of this coin became more profitable. So mining not only "still" makes sense. Rather, it makes more sense than before. Ones prefer to hold DOGE hoping for the growth of the coin while others seek the best buy bitcoin site in the UK to quickly sell what they have mined.
For example, on a crypto marketplace Changelly, Dogecoin can be sold instantly right on the homepage of the website. You only need to sign up (it doesn't take much time) and scroll down. In the bottom part of the website, there are You Send and You Get Approximately sections. You should specify the currencies of exchange and the amount of DOGE you are going to sell. Tap on Exchange Now.
Then you should enter an address and complete the transaction. Considering, how easy it is to sell DOGE while mining is still available for GPU/CPU rig owners, mining DOGE can really improve your wealth.
Mining Basics
Assuming that your knowledge in mining is limited, here is a crash course on Dogecoin mining. When you are part of the network, your machine, the node, makes calculations, and the first node that finishes the calculation will be the one that gets the reward.
Mining is used for the cryptocurrency networks based on the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus protocol. It means that the security and stable functioning of the network depends on mining. The networks based on other consensus protocols (for example, proof-of-stake) don't rely on mining at all. Mining is needed for validation of transactions. To secure the network from malicious actions, proof-of-work networks (Dogecoin is one of them) actions (transactions) should be validated by the community (miners). The chains of transactions form blocks. In order to validate them, miners must sacrifice some hashing power to the network. Miners set their devices to solve the math problems set by the network to create this energy-consuming barrier that keeps the network safe from intruders. As soon as the problem gets solved, the block of transactions gets founded and the hash is attached to it.
As the mining process is costly, the network incentivizes miners through the block reward. The miner who finds the block faster than others is paid. Dogecoin has no limit in supply so Dogecoins can be mined forever. Mining and proof-of-work in general are hugely criticized for being too consuming. The difficulty of math tasks is growing constantly as more and more people get involved in mining using more powerful equipement. It leads to colossal energy consumption making crypto mining quite harmful in terms of ecology. To perform a shady activity on the network one would have to control over 50% of the entire hashing power in the system. That's one of the reasons why decentralization matters as it helps to withstand the intruders. Just think of that every hacker will have to deal with the entire community if he wants to hijack the network. The situation when hackers manage to control over 50% of the network and mess with transactions is called 51% attack.
Types of Mining
There are three approaches to mining: mining in the pool, solo mining, and cloud mining. The latter method is drastically different from the rest. In fact, cloud mining doesn't suppose that you should mine anything yourself. You just choose the plan and pay money. Accordingly to what you have paid, the third party that has mining equipment will do the mining for you. The cloud mining companies mine coins using their own mining farms and every day send customers rewards corresponding with the money they've spent on the plan (or mining contract). The more you pay, the more power they use for mining. The rewards go to you, however, the cloud mining platforms charge maintenance fees to keep their equipment well. The main problem with cloud mining is that most cloud mining platforms offer not profitable plans or simply don't provide fair payouts. There is a great number of cloud mining platforms that appear to be nothing but Ponzi schemes as they sell mining contracts but stop sending customers payouts early after. In most cases, they provide users with weak explanations on the matter and then shut down entirely. Choosing a cloud mining platform isn't an easy task however, there are several decent providers around the world. Some of them can be used to mine Dogecoin, too.
Now let's finally move to the basic ways of mining. Most people mine via mining pools, however, some mine solo. Going solo means that you will be working alone on the network, and your machine will be the node. If you join a Dogecoin pool, you will be combining your mining machine’s processing power with the output of the rest members of the pool. When you are a part of a pool, the chances of getting a reward are much higher, but there are some drawbacks, too. First off, you will have to pay fees to be the part of the Dogecoin mining pool, and once the reward comes in, you will get only a fraction of it as the rewards are split between the rest miners. Mining solo, on the other hand, means that you won’t get rewarded as often, but you won’t be paying any fees, and the reward will be entirely yours. I'll name several worthy ones here. Due to difficulty rise in 2018 Dogecoin solo mining became barely profitable. My recommendation is to join a pool.
Requirements for Mining Dogecoin
There are two main components to mining: the hardware and the internet connection. While the hardware can vary in power, some being able to mine more than others, a stable internet connection is crucial.
Hardware
You can mine Dogecoin on pretty much anything with a CPU, but if you decided to get into mining, you probably wouldn’t be doing that on your phone. For that, you have two options: a mining rig or a dedicated dogecoin miner. While both may sound like it’s the same thing, they are not.
A mining rig is a custom build PC that is usually used only for mining. While you can mine using the processing power of a CPU, the preferred way to mine is with GPU power. If you decide to go down that road, your PC will have a cheap CPU and motherboard but fairly expensive GPUs. Try to find a motherboard that supports multiple GPUs to be plugged in. The reason for favoring the GPU is that it can process much more power than CPU does. Considering the GPUs’ price, don’t go overboard with a massive mining rig; start small and upgrade as your mining experience increases.
If you don’t want to bother with building a Doge mining rig, you have the option to buy a Doge miner. While you may be able to find second-hand mining rigs on the market, I wouldn’t recommend them. For this approach, I would recommend getting ASIC or application-specific integrated circuit miner. These are prebuilt devices that provide excellent performance for a relatively affordable price. ASIC miners that are good for Litecoin can be used for Dogecoin mining as well as both currencies are based on the Scrypt algorithm.
Regardless of which road you want to take, it is crucial to estimate profitability, which I’ll talk about in a bit. To do that, you will need to figure out the hashrate of your mining rig and determine if the profit from the rewards will cover your initial and monthly costs.
Keep in mind that the rigs draw power a lot more than a standard desktop PC, so you should take that into consideration as well. There are tons of online services that can do the math for you, and all you would need to do is enter the required data. To learn the power of your rig you should search for a service that can do a benchmark. Some mining pools provide this feature. Apart from benchmarks you will need to use a mining profitability calculator. One can be found on some mining pools or side services. The calculators work this way: you insert the hashrate that you've learned after a benchmark, provide the electricity costs in your location and get the results. If the calculator shows that your rig is barely compensating the expenses you should consider finding a more efficient equipment. The power can be increased via soft overclocking, however, if you overclock your GPUs too hard, it can turn out harmful for your rig.
Depending on the dogecoin mining setup you have, you may need to think about where you are going to store it and how you plan to keep the temperatures under control. Ideally, if you decide to go pro, you should put your mining equipment in a separate room with adequate cooling because if it starts to overheat, you will reduce its lifespan. Another reason why you’d want to keep that equipment from your bedroom is the noise. No matter if you have a rig or an ASIC miner, it can get reasonably loud once it starts crunching numbers.
Software
The use of software for your Dogecoin mining equipment will depend on the route you took.
If you decide to build your own rig for mining, then you have several options for mining software. As i mentioned, CPU mining is not worth it, so I’ll talk about GPU mining. While you have two options, Nvidia or AMD, the actual list of choices is much larger. Both team green and team red have multiple excellent GPUs that you can use for mining. You have a couple of options for the mining software, but the one you’ll use will depend on the GPU you have installed. For the first time miners, I would recommend going for EasyMiner as it is one of the most-user friendly options. As an alternative, you have CGminer or CuraMinder, developed to work optimally with Nvidia GPUs.
For the ASIC miner, you can still use EasyMiner as an excellent mining software for beginners. Among the others, you have CGminer and MultiMiner.
Where to Mine Dogecoin?
Prohashing
Prohashing is the old pool supporting a large number of coins. It provides much analytical data so seasoned miners might find this platform interesting. In general, Prohashing strives to be a transparent platform. Dogecoin is actively mined on Prohashing. The pool allows merged mining (mining 2 coins based on the same algorithm simultaneously). Mining difficulty can be regulated by the miner. The reward methods used on Prohashing are Pay Per Share (PPS) meaning that miners get paid in accordance to the amount of shares they send. The fee for PPS mining is 3.99%. PPLNS mining is also supported. The fee is 1.99%. All in all, the pool is respected and considered to be a decent mining platform.
AntPool
AntPool is one of the biggest mining pools in the world. This Chinese pool is owned by Bitmain — the world biggest producer of ASIC-miners. By some accounts, over 10% of all blocks of cryptocurrency transactions are produced on AntPool. The reputation of this platform is unquestionable.
AntPool Launches Merged Mining: Mine 1 BTC #bitcoin , Get 10 NMC #namecoin Free; Mine 1 LTC #Litecoin , Get 1,000 DOGE #dogecin Free?
— AntPool (@AntPoolofficial) April 17, 2017
Scrypt function is supported on the pool so Dogecoin is merged-mined together with Litecoin. Miners using the PPS model pay 3% fee while miners using PPLNS model don't pay fees at all. Solo miners pay a 1% fee.
Poolin
Poolin is another giant in our list, an old established mining pool supporting multiple coins. The pool is Chinese. It was founded by former Bitmain employees. Allegedly, it has the biggest share of hashrate in the Bitcoin network (around 13%). People can't mine Dogecoin directly, but have Dogecoin rewards in addition to Litecoin rewards as both coins are based on the same hash function. The mining fee is rather average (2.5%).
Litecoinpool.org
Litecoinpool is one of the oldest active cryptocurrency pools. It was launched back in 2011. As you can learn from the name, its main purpose is Litecoin mining. We already know that both Litecoin and Dogecoin rely on the Scrypt function. It makes the merged-mining of Litecoin and Dogecoin possible. Those who mine Litecoin on this pool, get Dogecoins without even paying additional fees for that. Litecoin pool is one of the safest and reputable pools out there. The platform is user-friendly. The platform is equally good for experienced miners and beginners. The reward model is PPS.
Trustpool
Trustpool is a Russian mining pool. It was launched in 2019. It supports around 7 coins. One of them is Litecoin. Thanks to merged-mining, it is possible to mine Dogecoin together with Litecoin effortlessly. The merged mining is possible with the PPLNS reward method. Currently, there are several thousands active miners mining DOGE on Trustpool.
ViaBTC
ViaBTC is another big pool that allows merged mining Litecoin and Dogecoin. The pool was created in 2016. Around 8% of all BTC blocks are produced on ViaBTC. The pool is not that transparent. Rather it boasts a handy interface and can be regarded as beginner-friendly. Some users critique the pool for slow updates of stats. Others mention such a problem as bad customer service. Nevertheless, the pool is live and accumulates much power. Despite the drawbacks, it can be used for Dogecoin mining.
Aikapool
By some accounts, Aikapool has the biggest share in the total Dogecoin hashrate (7%) hence it can be called the most popular place for DOGE minting. Actually, we have some doubts over the relevance of this info. What is true is that Aikapool is mentioned on many lists as one of the best pools for Dogecoin mining. The pool supports many other coins, too. The mining fee is quite low, only 1%. The reward method is PPS. Aikapool has existed for several years. However, some users were reporting issues with withdrawals or receiving rewards. It's better to do a thorough research before starting to use Aikapool.
Software For Dogecoin Mining
As for mining software, there are quite many options for Dogecoin. CPU mining is not very profitable and there is only one notable miner for those who want to mine DOGE with CPU — it is called CPUminer, a software used for numerous cryptocurrencies including Dogecoin. Alternatively, you can use an EasyMiner. There are much more GPU miners available on the web. For Nvidia graphic cards you can use CUDA Miner. CG Miner is regarded as more universal software working equally well for GPUs both by AMD and Nvidia. EasyMiner that is known for its clean interface can be recommended for those who only begin to explore mining. EasyMiner is good for different GPU brands.
ASIC-miners owners can use MultiMiner which is considered as one of the best options for DOGE mining. CGminer and EasyMiner that are good for GPU mining are also good for ASIC miners.
Cloud Mining Options
If you are going to earn some DOGE but don't want to or cannot build your own mining rig, no matter CPU, GPU, or ASIC-based, you can invest in cloud mining. We have already warned you about possible risks associated with cloud mining as many such platforms turn out to be scams or just not profitable. Nevertheless, there are platforms where you can earn some DOGE via cloud mining.
NiceHash
NiceHash is the global hashing power marketplace where users rent and lease hashing power for mining of currencies. The platform is reputable, it survived a hacking incident in 2017, however, managed to preserve its position on the market. It's safe to say that of all cloud mining platforms, NiceHash is the most transparent one. You can rent some computer power on NiceHash and use it for DOGE mining in the mining pool you like.
Eobot
Eobot was launched in 2013. It is one of the earliest cloud mining platforms. The founders of the company are not known, however, the company is registered in the US which along with a decent lifespan makes Eobot a trustworthy operation. The maintenance fees on Eobot start at a 33% rate which is quite high. Probably that's a good price to pay for a stable customer support and legitimacy of the operation. Dogecoin is one of over 20 cryptocurrencies available on Eobot.
Profitablity
This is an important question, and the answer is yes. At least, nowadays. Let me explain.
If you are after profit, then mining Dogecoin is one of the good options on the crypto market. It wasn't so in 2020 but 2021 saw a great DOGE price growth. As of March 14, 2021, the Dogecoin price is $0.056, and with a 10,000 reward for a new block on the network, you are looking at $560. In the recent past it was nearly impossible to get much profit out of Dogecoin mining as the coin's price was less 1 cent. These days, the situation is much better for Dogecoin miners and mining DOGE makes sense.
If you want to exchange Dogecoin to any other cryptocurrency, you can do it at Changelly PRO in a few clicks! Changelly PRO is a cryptocurrency exchange launched this year by the development team that created the Changelly instant exchange in 2015. More than 80 trading pairs are represented on the exchange. Notable features include competitive commissions and support for margin trading.
Conclusion
For years, Dogecoin mining was not that popular, however, the times have changed. If you haven’t mine Dogecoin before, you should follow this guide and get into the game. Keep in mind that even though mining Dogecoin is a lot less difficult than Bitcoin, the reward combined with the coin’s price makes it less profitable. However, the real profit depends on your hardware, software, electricity costs, and the way you take care of your rig and mining environment. And after you get some profit, you can do with it whatever you want - hold it for the future, trade it on crypto exchanges such as HitBTC, or do something else. Good luck!