Ethereum

Is Ethereum fork ‘EthereumPoW’ up in line after Merge

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2 years ago

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The group behind EthereumPoW (ETHW), a proof-of-work fork of the Ethereum blockchain, has officially announced plans to launch its hardfork shortly after the Ethereum Merge on 15 September. This, despite a difficult few weeks since its introduction.

After the Merge, the ETHW mainnet will launch, according to a tweet

from the @EthereumPow account. The thread said that the precise time will be publicized with a countdown timer one hour before launch, and everything, including the final code, binaries, configuration files, nodes information, RPC, and explorer, will be made public when the time expires.

That being said, CoinGecko executive Bobby Ong claims that current miners are encouraged to produce a new proof-of-work version of ETH.

What to expect?

The second-largest blockchain by market value will transition to a proof-of-stake consensus method later this week, eliminating the need for energy-intensive mining operations.

This action has sparked a divide in the Ethereum ecosystem as miners discuss forking Ethereum or starting to mine other blockchains because they are hesitant to give up their source of income.

To guarantee that the chainID converts to 10001 and that “the chain is the longest…of ETHW,” the ETHW mainnet will launch at “the block height of the Merge block ‘plus’ 2048 empty blocks.”

The first transactions on ETHW will be noted in merge block +2049. Reportedly, “block rewards for the empty blocks would be directed to the 1559 multi-sig wallet.”

Supporters of the Merge claim that the modification will speed up and save energy on the blockchain. The branched network will resemble Ethereum in appearance and functionality, but it will merely be a shadow of the real thing, with currencies and apps floating around with no purpose.

Well, several Ethereum miners intend to continue using the old network.

The forked version of ETHW has already been listed on several exchanges, including

Poloniex, Bitfinex, and Coinbase. 

However, there are critics

Interestingly, Justin Sun supports the EthereumPOW token (ETHW), but there are still concerns about how much traction it can achieve in comparison to the well-established Ethereum Classic, which upholds PoW.

That said, Igor Artamonov, a developer on Ethereum Classic, and other ETHW critics objected to the idea of launching the EthereumPoW mainnet following the Merge. Igor stated,

“It’s like losing 90% of momentum just on launch. And no one would take it seriously if it’s not a continuous / non-stop chain.”

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