Dogecoin Community Celebrates as Merge Mining with Litecoin Begins

Dogecoin has officially switched to auxiliary proof-of-work (AuxPoW) mining.
The update now enables litecoin miners to process transactions, while providing an additional layer of security to the decentralized network.
The altcoin’s switch to auxiliary proof-of-work, also known as merge mining, has been in the works for some time. The move was announced this August after months of serious and, at times, passionate debate within the dogecoin community. The merge mining concept was suggested in April by litecoin creator Charlie Lee.
Dogecoin creator Jackson Palmer told CoinDesk that AuxPoW was necessary as the gradual decline in price had removed some of the incentive for miners to mine dogecoin. Further, any resulting network hashrate drop could have created the conditions for potentially malicious transactions to be fraudulently committed and confirmed.
Palmer said:

This post was published at Coin Desk on September 11, 2014.