Now that Ethereum has transitioned into a proof-of-stake blockchain, Dogecoin is the second largest PoW crypto next to Bitcoin.
Ethereum having completed the much-awaited Ethereum Merge on September 15, the blockchain has retired its proof-of-work consensus mechanism and has officially shifted to proof-of-stake. So the Ethereum Merge means that Ethereum is no longer the second-biggest PoW blockchain right next to Bitcoin, and the exalted position now goes to none other than Dogecoin (DOGE).
Bitcoin remains at the lead with a market cap of over $353 billion, and DOGE comes in second with a market cap above $7 billion. After them, Ethereum Classic (ETC), Litecoin (LTC), and Monero (XMR) respectively take the third, fourth, and fifth spots as the biggest PoW blockchains. Notably, when it comes to node count, Dogecoin ranks sixth, behind Bitcoin, Zcash (ZEC), Filecoin (FIL), Monero, and Litecoin, in that order.
As Dogecoin developer Timothy Stebbing states, more of the massive community behind the crypto might just help the latter metric grow by installing further DOGE nodes.