Ethereum PoW fork supporters move to scrap EIP-1559

The developers behind the potential Ethereum PoW (ETHW) fork published the cryptocurrency’s manifesto.

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The Manifesto of Proof-of-Work: An Open Letter to the Ethereum Community

“He who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself; and if you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze into you.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche pic.twitter.com/rywLMQVbTw

— EthereumPoW (ETHW) Official (@EthereumPoW) August 10, 2022

The developers noted that the Ethereum Foundation had abandoned decentralisation. They also recalled The DAO’s collapse. The hard fork’s byproduct was the emergence of Ethereum Classic.

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We refrain from speculating on the motivation that caused the Ethereum elites to temporarily suspend their immutable ledger narrative. Nevertheless, the ideological difference bore the schism that split the community into ETH and ETC.

— EthereumPoW (ETHW) Official (@EthereumPoW) August 10, 2022

«[…] в процессе принятия решений нет ничего децентрализованного; управление, основанное на сообществе, носит только номинальный характер; идеология и все остальное отброшены в пользу более высоких цен на токены», — написали авторы.

Presenting themselves as a “truly decentralised volunteer community”, the developers laid out the manifesto’s main points:

• no premine and inflation;
• support for the Доказательство работы (PoW) algorithm;
• the cancellation of the EIP-1559 proposal, which envisages burning part of transaction fees.

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5. The network, EthereumPow (to distinguish it from the soon-to-be PoS alternative chain) is to eventually become completely autonomous and self-sustained, devoid of any governance entity. We set the goal to achieve it in 3 years.

— EthereumPoW (ETHW) Official (@EthereumPoW) August 10, 2022

«Сеть EthereumPow (чтобы отличить ее от будущей альтернативной цепочки PoS) должна в конечном итоге стать полностью автономной и самодостаточной, лишенной какой-либо управляющей организации. Мы поставили цель достичь этого за три года», — говорится в треде.

The EIP-1559 proposal became part of London hard fork. It gained support from developers and users, but divided miners into two camps.

Opponents of the proposal, including those collectively controlling 44.8% of the network’s hash rate via the SparkPool and Ethermine pools, sought to command more than 51% of the computing power on the latter. Their attempt, however, failed.

The new schism in the community sparked Ethereum’s transition to the Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm during the activation of the The Merge upgrade. The upgrade will significantly affect the cryptocurrency’s core properties, making it deflationary and much more environmentally friendly.

The developers had tentatively approved the mainnet migration for September 2022. The Goerli testnet Goerli testnet‘s transition to PoS will occur when the network’s cumulative difficulty reaches 10 790 000.

At the end of July, influential Chinese miner Chandler Guo expressed the idea of a fork with a Ethereum branch that would continue to operate on the Proof-of-Work algorithm. The ETHPoW asset that emerged would allow miners of the second-largest cryptocurrency to continue operating after the merge.

Poloniex had already announced support for the rumored PoW Ethereum fork and on August 8 listed the ETHPoS (ETHS) and ETHW tokens. MEXC Global followed suit.

BitMEX introduced derivatives based on ETHPoW, and Huobi said it would take steps to support a potential fork after “getting a sense of user sentiment” and if the assets comply with listing rules.

Trading platforms Digifinex and OKX also began assessing the implications of a possible split of the second-largest cryptocurrency.

Conversely, DeBank and the decentralised oracle network Chainlink voiced the opposite view.

As Citi analysts noted, The Merge will reduce Ethereum’s energy consumption, shift the asset’s issuance to a deflationary model and “pave the way to a more scalable future through sharding.”

CoinShares’ experts were skeptical about the prospects of a potential Ethereum PoW fork, calling it not viable.

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