The Merge update will inevitably lead to the emergence of a PoW Ethereum fork in response to the demands of the community, miners, hardware manufacturers and exchanges. This was stated by representatives of the network-branch project.
Open letter to Bob — https://t.co/5KOX7Wa6z8
— EthereumPoW (ETHW) Official (@EthereumPoW) August 12, 2022
In late July, influential miner Chandler Gao proposed launching a fork of Ethereum that would continue to operate on the Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm. The new Ethereum PoW (ETHW) network is intended to enable miners to continue operating after the mainnet’s merge with the Beacon Chain and the transition to Proof-of-Stake (PoS).
Ethereum developers planned the activation of the upgrade on September 15-16.
On August 9, ETC Cooperative head Bob Summerwill wrote an open letter to Gao, in which he doubted the feasibility of the fork. In his view, there simply wasn’t enough time for the project’s supporters to resolve the technical and organizational challenges.
Summerwill also noted that even if a new network were to appear, he does not see any consumer benefit. It would not attract the interest of the issuers of the largest stablecoins, DeFi and NFT projects, or the majority of Ethereum application developers, Summerwill said.
In conclusion, he proposed that miners after The Merge switch to mining the existing fork — Ethereum Classic (ETC), whose ecosystem is led by the organization he chairs.
In a reply letter, ETHW supporters rebutted his main arguments. Regarding the technical side they said that a core team of developers has been formed that:
- defused the difficulty bomb;
- updated the network identifier;
- added protection against a replay attack.
A test network has been created to test the decisions, and the Ethereum codebase requires minimal changes for the fork and they are “virtually complete,” said ETHW representatives.
According to them, a group of volunteer enthusiasts is working “around the world” with exchanges and wallet providers. As of today, six platforms support ETHW transactions in the form of IOUs or futures.
Regarding the lack of interest in the new network, ETHW supporters said that industry players “will not want to miss the opportunities”. In their view, there is a broad demand in the Ethereum community to preserve the PoW chain. They promised to present concrete steps for ecosystem development within three weeks.
In response to Summerwill’s suggestion to switch to mining ETC, ETHW supporters noted that ETC’s hashrate is 27 TH/s, whereas after Ethereum’s move to PoS 996 TH/s would be freed. In their view, a small ETC mining pool simply would not be able to absorb such capacity.
“ETC has not grown since its birth. In the last five to six years it has stagnated, stagnated and failed to create any ecosystem. It is quite possible that ETC will remain a giant child,” the developers added.
JPMorgan analysts have suggested that ETC could become the main beneficiary of miners’ influx after Ethereum’s move to PoS.
CoinShares experts also cast doubt on the viability of the potential ETHW.
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