Charlie Lee Re-Proposes Merged Mining; Says “Dogecoin Was Not Designed to Survive”

During Charlie Lee’s speech at The North American Bitcoin Conference in Chicago, the topic of Dogecoin was brought up a few times. His speech was all about the steps coins need to take to be successful, when someone from the audience sparked up the mergedmining topic. Lee is the creator of Litecoin, and a few months ago he offered Dogecoin a merged mining deal with Litecoin. But if the Dogecoin developers continue to not take action, he believes that Dogecoin will not survive.

Lee’s speech was all about how digital currencies need to diversify their mining platforms, rather than copy Bitcoin and Litecoin. He believes that if they don’t they’ll die out. In the case of Dogecoin; however, he believes the hashrate will become a problem that will kill it off.

“The Dogecoin development team needs to do something,” Lee told CCN. “Most people in the community actually don’t understand the problem. The hashrate is so low that it’s getting dangerous. It’s getting to the point where anyone with a small ASIC farm can attack it.”

Dogecoin faced 51% attacks in the past that looked to threaten its livelihood, but it was fortunate enough to push through. When it happened though, Lee was one of the first people to reach out to lend a helping hand. He proposed Dogecoin merge-mine with Litecoin, but was rejected by the community.

“Dogecoin was not designed to survive,” he said. “I’ve reached out to the Dogecoin community twice to help them. One thing about the Dogecoin mining is that it’s designed like a meme; it dies out in one year. It will happen because their block reward is halving so quickly. Their hashrate went pretty high and now it’s 1/15 the size of Litecoin’s.”

“Merged Mining is still a possibility”

Lee does not want to speculate their death and leave them stranded though. He re-proposed merged mining to help them through the hard time’s they’re going through.

“Merged mining is still a possibility. I think they just don’t want to be tied with Litecoin because they’re prideful. They think that it can survive without it. I’ve talked with the developers a few times so we’ll see what happens,” he said. “I think that people don’t like the term merged mining.”

Lee pointed out that merged mining wouldn’t tie Dogecoin to Litecoin per say, just the mining. The miners would mine and receive both coins at the same time; similar to Namecoin and Bitcoin. When it was proposed in the beginning though, the Dogecoin community did not see it this way and had lengthy discussions about the next few steps.

Dogecoin certainly has a few problems ahead of it according to Lee. He predicts a 51% attack is on the horizon as their block reward continues to halve. It will be interesting to see how the Dogecoin community responds as they face a lower hashrate moving forward.

“I’m not trying to scare people, but something needs to happen,” Lee stressed when speaking to CCN. “I talked to the lead developer and I made it obvious that he really needs to make a decision to do something before it’s too late. Once you get attacked, people lose confidence.”

Lee’s original post on /r/Dogecoin . /r/Dogecoin mod’s response .

Featured image from Shutterstock.