Cats, dogs, frogs, squirrels… Memecoins themed around adorable characters and animals have become the stars of the crypto market in 2024, capturing multiple trending keywords of the year. Today’s spotlight is on Pepecoin (PEP), a Dogecoin fork that uses a frog mascot as its distinguishing feature.
What is Pepecoin (PEP)?
Introduction
PEP was officially launched on January 30, 2024. As a fork of Dogecoin, it was created by Dogecoin community members Zordiak and Karzo and is a community-centric crypto. Many may be more familiar with PEPE, which has become the 20th largest memecoin by market cap, just behind DOGE and SHIB. However, unlike PEPE, which was launched on Ethereum in April 2023, PEP operates on its own blockchain. PEP adopts the Proof of Work (PoW) consensus mechanism, similar to Bitcoin and Litecoin.
Pepecoin’s Tokenomics
PEP advocates for a fair distribution principle, with 100% of its coins generated through PoW mining. The initial block reward for PEP is 500,000 coins. To control the token supply and slow down the distribution of new PEP, a halving mechanism is implemented every 100,000 blocks, with the reward eventually fixed at 10,000 PEP per block after 600,000 blocks. Thus, PEP is an inflationary cryptocurrency, like DOGE, designed to encourage spending rather than hoarding.
Source: https://pepecoin.org/faq.php
As of now, PEP’s latest block height stands at 325,370. The third halving was completed at the end of November this year, reducing the current block reward to 62,500 PEP. The fourth halving is expected in early February 2025, when the reward will decrease to 31,250 PEP.
Potential Mining Rewards
Since November, multiple mining pools have added PEP to their LTC/DOGE merged mining options, leading to a surge in its total network hashrate, which now reaches 1.52 PH/s. For LTC miners on these pools, PEP’s inclusion as a merged mining coin offers additional rewards without requiring extra effort. While some pools may require miners to manually configure a wallet address to receive merged mining rewards, ViaBTC Pool users don’t need to prepare a wallet address in advance. PEP rewards are directly credited to their ViaBTC accounts, requiring no extra steps.
At the current stage, miners can generate 90 million PEP daily. According to the CoinEx exchange, each PEP is valued at $0.001255, translating to a daily revenue of approximately $113,000 for miners. This revenue surpasses the daily earnings of several established PoW projects like Nervos Network (CKB), Zcash (ZEC), and Ravencoin (RVN).
An ANTMINER L9, with a hashrate of 16 GH/s, can currently mine approximately 0.0365 LTC, 129.3 DOGE, 0.3 BELLS, 0.31 LKY, and 850 PEP daily based on the current mining difficulty, yielding respective revenues of $4.3, $53.4, $0.27, $3.44, and $1.06. PEP contributes about 2% to the miner’s total daily revenue. Although this proportion is relatively low, as an additional reward, its long-term accumulation can add up to a significant amount.
How to Mine Pepecoin (PEP)?
PEP has supported merged mining since block height 42,000, meaning miners can generate PEP while mining Scrypt-based coins like LTC and DOGE without consuming additional hashrate. To participate, miners need an ASIC Miner compatible with the Scrypt algorithm, such as the ANTMINER L9 or ElphaPex DG 1.
Source: https://x.com/ViaBTC/status/1866401306547798289
When choosing a mining pool, ensure it explicitly supports PEP merged mining. For instance, ViaBTC Pool has officially announced support for LTC/DOGE/BELLS/LKY/PEP merged mining and has launched a 30-day zero-fee campaign for PEP and LKY.
* For more details on mining PEP with ViaBTC, see: “PEP Mining Guide”
Remember, PEP is an additional reward from merged mining, requiring no extra hashrate. To maximize your earnings, use a high-efficiency Scrypt Miner and choose a mining pool that supports merged mining!