Why Dogecoin’s move to PoS could end in a catastrophe

• Dogecoin could face centralization and regulatory problems if it switches to PoS.
• DOGE circulation reduced, alongside a decrease in development activity.

Not only has Dogecoin [DOGE] pseudonymous lead developer Mishaboar threatened to quit the project if it transitions to Proof-of-Stake (PoS), but he also mentioned that making the move would be catastrophic.

Realistic or not, here’s DOGE’s market cap in ETH terms

On 20 August, Mishaboar responded to a public poll by Marshall Hayner about making staking available on the Dogecoin network. Although 60% of the participants voted against the possibility, Mishaboar did his part by explaining what cons the move might have.

Keep risks out of DOGE’s way

According to the developer, who prides himself on being a “half boar, half man”, Dogecoin’s best bet was to stay put as Proof-of-Work (PoW) project. He added that moving to PoS would mean that DOGE would be centralized, and the network would underdeliver. 

Furthermore, he opined that the move cannot be sensible using Ethereum [ETH] as an example. According to him, the transition of the second-largest blockchains has opened it up to problems with regulators. 

So, he would want Dogecoin to completely avoid that. And for the pros of PoS, Mishaboar mentioned that Dogecoin did not exactly need them.

If this refers to false “staking”, based on lending then no. The risk is too high unless you are an insider (and even then…).

If this refers to a remote possibility of Doge ever switching to PoS, after what I have seen over the past 2 years, i would probably then move to…

— Mishaboar (@mishaboar) August 20, 2023

While various blockchains have adopted PoS as a more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly alternative to PoW, Dogecoin’s experiment this year has been different. Instead of switching to a new consensus mechanism, the open-source project has rather tried its hands on NFTs operating in the ecosystem.

A few months back, some Dogecoin developers came up with the idea of Doginals and the DRC-20 token standard.  For context, Doginals came up as a similar project to Ordinals on the Bitcoin [BTC] network. 

And rather than embedding data on Bitcoin’s satoshis, Doginals did it on shibes, the smallest unit of Dogecoin. At the height of its adoption, transactions on the Dogecoin network surpassed that of Bitcoin and Litecoin [LTC].

Second time coming 

However, Mishaboar was not the first Dogecoin developer to shut down talks of a PoS move. In December 2022, developer Michi Lumin opined that the transition would not come to pass. He maintained this stance despite public support from Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin.

Read Dogecoin’s [DOGE] Price Prediction 2023-2024

Meanwhile, on-chain data from Santiment, showed that Dogecoin development activity has been up and down over the last 30 days. The development activity measures the public GitHub repositories dedicated to a project.

Therefore, the inconsistencies with the metric suggest that developers have been sometimes committed and sometimes, not committed to upgrades on the blockchain. As per its 30-day circulation, Santiment showed that it flatlined. This means that DOGE has not experienced a notable hike in coins used within the period.