Last Friday found Messari’s Mainnet 2022 conference Place. The list of guest speakers was huge, and Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin was also in attendance. Naturally, he spoke about the recent “merge” that has now turned Ethereum into a Proof-of-Stake blockchain. He also had a lot to say about dogecoin (DOGE) and other Proof-of-Work cryptocurrencies.
“Dogecoin must also switch”
Before the upgrade on September 15, Ethereum was also just a Proof-of-Work network, so it needed miners to keep the network running. The switch will make Ethereum a lot more energy efficient, according to the Ethereum Foundation. Scalability is another big advantage.
But there are still plenty of networks that are still just Proof-of-Work based, and the popular developer believes that should change. “I hope Zcash makes the switch soon, and I also hope Dogecoin makes the move at some point,” he stated.
At the conference, Vitalik met Messari CEO Ryan Selkis and Electric Coin Company Zooko Wilcox O’Haran. Electric Coin Company is the lead developer of the privacy-focused Zcash (ZEC). Both programmers were convinced that porting Ethereum to PoS would never work, but both now say they have been proven wrong.
The developer of Zcash is now waiting to see if Ethereum remains stable after the switch. If this is the case, then this community also wants to switch.
Dogecoin now consumes more than Ethereum
What the developers of Dogecoin (DOGE) are up to is not yet clear. A week ago, crypto news broke that Dogecoin is now the second largest Proof-of-Work token. The new fork ETHPoW (ETHW) has not yet been able to achieve success. In fact, a major former ETH miner thinks 90% of ETHPoW miners will go bankrupt.
Ethereum classic (ETC) also does not have the market value that comes close to regular ETH. Dogecoin has a fanatical community, but whether it would want to switch is questionable.