- A Twitter poll on Dogecoin’s PoS staking sparks a heated debate.
- The proposal to switch to Proof of Stake is on the Dogecoin Foundation’s site.
- Dogecoin has been trading in phased consolidation since last week.
Dogecoin (DOGE), the largest memecoin by global market capitalization, is pondering a makeover in the consensus mechanism. The Dogecoin Foundation roadmap clearly states that Dogecoin’s core developers should join forces with Vitalik Buterin, the founder of the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain, which switched to Proof of Stake (PoS) last year.
“Integration with online retailers is paramount,” the Dogecoin Foundation states in the prologue, before indicating that every Dogecoin holder will have the chance to stake the top dog memecoin for yield via ‘Community Staking.’ While the community staking comes as a product of Dogecoin’s decentralization quest, the roadmap doesn’t state precisely when this feature will go live.
To determine if the DOGE Army is still interested in Dogecoin staking, DOGE core developer Marshall Hayner set up a poll on X, previously known as Twitter. Though votes went to 69% of “Yes” at the first checkpoint by the dev, the final results were somewhat unexpected: over 60% of Dogecoin community members said they wouldn’t stake DOGE at all.
In an interesting turn of events, a chair member of the Dogecoin Foundation expressed his doubts about the PoS switch.
Pros & Cons of the DogeCoin PoS Consensus
Liked by many for its eco-friendly ways, PoS is considered 99% greener than PoW. But there are also other factors to consider. In a reply to the Dogecoin PoS poll, Mischa Boar opined that PoS wouldn’t be a problem if sufficient research and resources aligned correctly. However, Boar also stated that “most PoS chains have underdelivered,” singling out Ethereum’s PoS blockchain: “Playing with Ethereum feels like a highway robbery.”
The DOGE Foundation chair member draws attention to the forthcoming problems with regulators, as so far, the PoS mechanism has been frowned upon in the United States. For instance, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission targets all Proof of Stake cryptocurrencies, urging them to register as securities. To illustrate, the SEC fined Kraken $30 million for staking services on Ethereum, making the fourth largest crypto exchange halt staking services.
Centralization dangers might occur if a single entity or a major corporation has close to 50% of the stake, making the blockchain network susceptible to manipulation. The Dogecoin Foundation chair member suggests payment channels and integration with payment providers to solve this.
Ultimately, most community members agree that switching to Proof of Stake would significantly lower the chain’s energy use. Crypto Carbon Ratings Institute calculates that Ethereum has used 99.99% less power than running on a Proof of Work consensus mechanism. However, the advantages are overshadowed by fears of centralization, price manipulation, and coarse regulators.
On the Flipside
- The discussion started as early as 2014 and had a few waves of PoS proponents, but a PoS switch isn’t likely soon.
Why This Matters
The consequences of changing the consensus mechanism to Proof of Stake also mean extra effort to maintain the new system.
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