What is the difference between Dogecoin and Bitcoin at the network level?

Question

With all the Dogecoin hype, mainstream media has been comparing Doge with established cryptos like Bitcoin.

I'm trying to understand the difference at the technical level:

1. It comes up that Bitcoin network has better security. Is that due to the hashrate? If more miners start switching to Doge, wouldn't that solve the problem?

2. Doge's codebase is also almost same as Bitcoin.

Ignoring the coin supply factor, where Doge can continue creating 5 billion coins per year, is there any other reason that the Bitcoin network is superior? Does it boil down to simply which network gets more adoption?

Answer 1

TL;DR: small code differences, but many larger ecosystem differences

IIRC, Dogecoin is a fork of Luckycoin, which in turn was forked from Litecoin, which was forked from Tenebrix, which was forked from Bitcoin. As far as I can tell, the main differences to Bitcoin are:

• Scrypt hashing algorithm:
  Originally introduced to avoid being a minority-hashrate altcoin to Bitcoin, and for being thought to be ASIC resistant.
• 1-minute blocks:
  Faster confirmation, but a shorter block interval may increase mining centralization.
• accelerated reward schedule:
  Full supply emission in less than 2 years via random rewards, then later changed to have a constant tail emission of 10,000 Doge per block.

Dogecoin is merge-mined with Litecoin, so it shares the protection of the hashrate of the incumbent Scrypt-coin and is therefore not trivially majority-attackable as some other minority-hashrate forks. Since Litecoin/Dogecoin use a different hashing algorithm (Scrypt) than Bitcoin (SHA256d), mining hardware does not transfer, it is only compatible with one or the other.

Presumably, people citing security concerns are alluding to Dogecoin Core being about 15,000 commits behind Bitcoin Core, with its master release citing inclusion of "changes from Bitcoin Core 0.14.3" (which was released in Sep 2018). I surmise that this means that a plethora of security fixes and performance improvements have not yet been backported to Dogecoin. The Dogecoin network has only about 220 public nodes at chain-tip. Allegedly, the software is struggling to synchronize the 3.7M block headers.

Dogecoin did also not backport segwit, which means that it still suffers from third-party transaction malleability, the quadratic hashing problem, and cannot support a Lightning Network. Since the upcoming Taproot soft fork builds on segwit, the resulting new features including Schnorr signatures, public key and signature aggregation, scriptless scripts, Merklized Alternative Script Tree (MAST), and Discreet Log Contracts (DLC) are also unlikely to become available.

So, Bitcoin and Dogecoin are practically the same, except that Dogecoin has no infrastructure, no ecosystem, a plethora of security and performance issues, maybe one developer, next to no code review, and none of the new shiny features. However, it is a great meme and a funny parody on all altcoins, so it will always have a special place in our hearts.

Answer 2

It comes up that Bitcoin network has better security. Is that due to the hashrate ? If more miners start switching to Doge, wouldn't that solve the problem ?

Security in Bitcoin is not just about hashrate although it is one of the important things to consider. Other things related to security:

1. Bitcoin Core: One of the top 10 C++ critical open source projects which follows a good review process for the all pull requests, lot of contributors from different parts of the world (some sponsored and few others volunteers). For reporting a vulnerability: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/security/policy

Example of one vulnerability fixed in past: https://bitcoincore.org/en/2018/09/20/notice/

2. Bitcoin protocol improvements: Anyone can propose BIPs. BIPs that affect consenus rules are more important in terms of security for the whole network so they are only implemented if enough Bitcoin developers agree to it being secure.

Example of BIP(Consenus layer): BIP 141

3. Vulnerabilities can also exist in wallets. Bitcoin has lot of open source wallets with active development from years.

Example of a bug in Bluewallet (v4.0.2): https://github.com/BlueWallet/BlueWallet/commit/8e9015e2fb2c306a89de962eb6a0654b73bd4ca9

4. Bitcoin has layer 2 solutions like Lightning Network, Sidechains (Liquid and Rootstock). Even though a decentralized network can be used for lot of things, it's not possible to scale it without multiple layers if everyone needs to run a full node. Lot of vulnerabilities have been in found and fixed in LN.

Doge code is also almost same as Bitcoin.

Dogecoin was forked from Lucky Coin (fork of Litecoin) and Litecoin is a fork of Bitcoin. There is not much development in Dogecoin since years and I cannot compare it with Bitcoin which has evolved with lot of improvements over years.

Is there any other reason Bitcoin network is superior ? Does it boil down to simply which network gets more adoption ?

There are thousands of reasons why Bitcoin is better than dogecoin. I will share an opinion below about altcoins although markets in long term resolve such things which everyone respects. Bitcoin's currency BTC has the highest marketcap right now in cryptocurrencies markets.

This question can be asked every few weeks with a new altcoin name considering they are more volatile than Bitcoin and some of them make few people rich in bull markets. So I think below points are relevant for this answer although it's my opinion:

A. Cryptocurrencies are not like stocks. Bitcoin was created and exists to be an option for people to replace fiat and gold from their life with something else that isn't controlled by governments or banks, decentralized, digital, censorship resistant etc. Altcoins are alternatives for bitcoin for people who cannot agree with the things in bitcoin or not interested to contribute in bitcoin or other intentions. Although almost every altcoin is promoted with a special feature they are all competing to be money and trying to be better than bitcoin.

B. We can compare it with forex currencies like USD, EUR, CNY, AUD, CAD, JPY, INR, etc. but with add-ons and memes. Cryptocurrencies are relatively new, different economics for each aka tokenomics, trying to be decentralized at protocol level and do multiple things on other layers with native token be used as currency for fees and everything involved. Even though we still can't compare because crypto anarchy is different from how governments work.

C. There is also an ideological aspect to cryptocurrencies and it's expected when you are trying to redefine MONEY, many cypherpunks, activists, hacktivists, privacy advocates involved and trying to separate money from state. The same money that is needed for almost everything you do in this world from birth to death, love to war and same money that makes some people more powerful.