Litecoin and Dogecoin Scrypt Miners

Scrypt ASIC miners for Litecoin and Dogecoin — Bitmain’s Antminer L7, L9 and L11, ElphaPex DG1+ and DG Home1, VolcMiner D1, Fluminer L-series and Goldshell Mini DOGE. Scrypt hardware mines LTC and DOGE at the same time through merged mining, which is the reason this category exists as its own thing rather than sitting under Bitcoin.

Merged mining is the point

Litecoin and Dogecoin share the Scrypt algorithm, and Dogecoin is merge-mined with Litecoin. One machine, one power bill, two coins paid out. That is why the economics of a Scrypt machine cannot be compared against a Bitcoin machine on hashrate — the units are different (GH/s and MH/s here, TH/s there) and so are the revenue streams. Compare Scrypt machines only against other Scrypt machines.

How to choose

Efficiency is measured in J/MH. The generational jump is large and worth knowing. An Antminer L7 9050M is rated 3,260 W ±10% for 9.05 GH/s, which is about 0.36 J/MH. The L9 is a different class: 16 GH/s at 3,360 W or 17 GH/s at 3,570 W, both around 0.21 J/MH. That is roughly 40% less energy per unit of work. If you are paying for power at anything above token rates, the L9 and L11 generation is where to look.

Match the machine to the room. The full-size L7, L9 and L11 units are 3–3.6 kW industrial machines on 200–240V, around 75 dB. They do not belong in a house. The small end of this category — ElphaPex DG Home1, Fluminer L2, Goldshell Mini DOGE III, VolcMiner D1 Mini — is built for domestic power and domestic noise, and is the honest answer for anyone mining Dogecoin at home.

Hydro variants need a loop. The L11 HU2 and HU6, DG Hydro1 and VolcMiner D1 Hydro are water-cooled. They are quieter and denser and they will not run without a loop and a heat rejection plan already in place. See hydro cooling.

Who this suits

People who want exposure to LTC and DOGE rather than BTC, home miners who want a machine they can live with, and operators diversifying off SHA-256. If you would rather mine Bitcoin, see Bitcoin miners; for single-chain altcoin ASICs, see Kaspa, Aleo, Kadena, Dash and CKB.

Everything is in all miners.

Scrypt hardware splits cleanly by generation, and the split is efficiency. The Antminer L9 17G and the L9 16G are the current machines at roughly 0.21 J/MH. The Antminer L7 9050M is the older and cheaper one at about 0.36 J/MH — nearly three quarters more energy for the same work, which is why it only makes sense on genuinely cheap power.

The L9 bins are one machine sorted by hashrate — 15G through 17G all run at 210 J/GH. Antminer L9 16G vs 17G works out what is left to decide once efficiency is off the table: cost per gigahash, and whether the unit fits the circuit you have.