Left to right: NEXUS L1, Fluminer L3 with the Hammer Miner DC04 in front of it, the Harlo H15 Dual, Hammer Miner DC08 with the Hammer Miner DC02 in front of it, and Hammer Miner DC06 with the Lucky Miner LG07 in front of it.
If you have ever wondered whether you can mine Dogecoin from a spare corner of your house, the short answer is yes, and it is simpler than most guides make it sound. This one walks through what actually happens inside a Dogecoin miner, why Litecoin comes along for the ride, how pools and solo mining differ, and what a home unit is like to live with. We sell mining hardware, so we tell you about ours at the end.
What scrypt is, and why a Bitcoin miner cannot mine Dogecoin
Every proof of work coin asks its miners to solve the same kind of puzzle over and over: run a block of data through a hashing algorithm and look for a result below a target. Bitcoin uses SHA-256, which needs almost no memory, only raw speed. Dogecoin and Litecoin use scrypt, an algorithm Colin Percival published in 2009 for the Tarsnap backup service. He designed it to be memory hard (the original paper): it keeps shuffling large amounts of data through memory, which made custom hardware expensive to build.
That is why a Bitcoin ASIC cannot mine Dogecoin, not slowly and not at all. A SHA-256 chip spends nearly all of its silicon on calculation and has no room for the memory scrypt needs. Red Fox Crypto, holding one of each, put it simply: they are “two different computer chips with two different purposes”.
Merged mining: one hash, two coins
In 2014 Dogecoin started accepting work done for Litecoin, a technique called merged mining, or auxiliary proof of work. Your miner builds a Litecoin block and tucks a reference to a Dogecoin block inside it. Every hash it produces is then checked against both networks. If a result is good enough for Litecoin it counts there, if it is good enough for Dogecoin it counts there, and now and then it counts for both. Tari Labs has a clear technical write up.
Dogecoin aims for a block every minute and Litecoin for one every two and a half minutes, so Dogecoin's difficulty sits well below Litecoin's on almost the same hashrate. In late September 2026 Dogecoin's difficulty was about 40 million against Litecoin's 93 million (Dogecoin and Litecoin on BitInfoCharts). In practice the same scrypt work lands Dogecoin blocks far more often than Litecoin blocks.
Merged mining needs no second machine and no extra power. The pool, or your own node, simply submits the same work to both chains.
The 10,000 DOGE block reward that never halves
Bitcoin cuts its block reward in half about every four years, and the next cut is expected around April 2028. Litecoin does the same, with its next halving expected around July 2027. Dogecoin does not. Since March 2014 every Dogecoin block has paid a fixed 10,000 DOGE plus fees, a little over five billion new coins a year (Wikipedia). Because that amount stays fixed while the total supply grows, the yearly inflation rate falls a little every year.
A proposal to cut the reward to 1,000 DOGE was filed in January 2025 and closed without being adopted. For a miner the meaning is simple: of the three coins in this story, Dogecoin's reward is the one that is not on a schedule to shrink.
What a home scrypt miner is
Industrial scrypt machines are built for data centers: several thousand watts, high voltage and fan noise you would not want in a house. A home scrypt miner is the same kind of chip in a smaller, quieter box, with fewer boards, bigger fans turning slower, and a power draw a normal outlet can handle. The better home units measure somewhere around 40 to 50 dB in creator reviews, between a quiet office and steady rain.
Three things matter when you choose one: the scrypt hashrate, measured in MH/s or GH/s, the power it pulls at the wall, and whether its firmware lets you choose your own pool. That last one has burned a lot of owners. Some home scrypt units have shipped locked to a single pool, and others sit on firmware that never gets an update, so check before you buy.
Pools and solo mining, in plain words
A pool is a group of miners who combine their hashrate. When anyone in the pool finds a block, the reward is split by how much work each member contributed, minus a small fee, usually 1 to 4 percent. You receive small, regular payouts, often in both DOGE and LTC.
Solo mining means pointing your miner at your own node or at a solo pool. If your miner finds a block, the whole block is yours. Most of the time it finds nothing, and once in a while it finds everything, which is why people call it lottery mining (we wrote more about that here). Home miners really do find Dogecoin blocks this way. Red Panda Mining found one solo on a home scrypt unit in April 2026 and did not notice for days. His own takeaway was that Dogecoin is far more approachable for home miners than Bitcoin, “but luck still plays a huge role.”
If you want to see how your own hashrate stacks up against today's network, solochance.org does the arithmetic for you. Several pools also offer solo merged mining, so one solo setup takes a shot at both the Litecoin and the Dogecoin block with the same work.
Power, heat and noise at home
Check the wattage first. A standard 15 amp, 120 volt North American circuit is rated for about 1,440 watts of continuous load, so a 450 watt miner uses roughly a third of it. Keep it off circuits that already run a space heater, a microwave or an air conditioner.
Expect the wall number to be higher than the dashboard. Creators who measure with a plug in meter, Red Fox Crypto and The Hobbyist Miner among them, keep finding home scrypt miners drawing 30 to 40 watts more than the unit reports, because the dashboard only sees power after conversion.
Every watt becomes heat. At 450 watts a miner gives off about 1,535 BTU an hour, roughly a third of a typical space heater. That is welcome in a basement in January and worth planning for in a closet in July. Give it airflow front and back, keep it off carpet, and use ethernet if the room has a port.
For noise, 50 dB is about a quiet room with a fan running. You will hear it in a bedroom at night and stop noticing it in a home office.
The Harlo H15: Bitcoin and Dogecoin from one box
Until now, mining both coins at home meant two machines, two plugs and two dashboards. The Harlo H15 puts both chip families in one chassis. A BM1373 runs SHA-256 at 15 TH/s for Bitcoin while scrypt silicon runs at 1.08 GH/s for Dogecoin and Litecoin, at the same time, from one built in power supply.
It connects over WiFi or ethernet, it shares its chassis and components with the Harlo B30, and it is compatible with Harlo OS if you want your own pools and schedules.
Batch 1 is 50 units at $999. It opens Wednesday, September 30 at 12:00 p.m. ET and ships November 14. Sign up and the drop email reaches you the moment it opens.
Frequently asked questions
Can a Bitcoin miner mine Dogecoin?
No. Bitcoin miners are built for SHA-256 and Dogecoin uses scrypt, which needs memory a SHA-256 chip does not have. You need a scrypt miner, or a unit like the H15 that carries both kinds of chip.
Do I get Litecoin as well?
With merged mining, yes. The same scrypt work is checked against both networks, and most scrypt pools pay out both coins.
Does the Dogecoin block reward halve?
No. Every block has paid a fixed 10,000 DOGE since 2014, and no halving is scheduled.
Do I need to run my own node?
No. You can point a miner at a pool, at a solo pool, or at your own node. Either way the payout address is yours.
Does the H15 come with Harlo OS?
The H15 is compatible with Harlo OS, rather than shipping with it installed.