Despite a tough few weeks since its announcement, the team behind EthereumPoW (ETHW), a proof-of-work splinter of the Ethereum Blockchain, has finally announced plans to launch its hard fork shortly after the Ethereum Merge on September 15.
“ETHW mainnet will take place within 24 hours of the merge”, de @EthereumPow Twitter account posted. “The exact time will be announced 1 hour before launch with a countdown timer, and everything, including final code, binaries, configuration files, node info, RPC, explorer, etc. will be made public when time is up.”
The Ethereum merger later this week will switch the second-largest blockchain by market cap to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, eliminating the need for energy-intensive mining operations. This move has caused a rift in the Ethereum ecosystem as miners – unwilling to give up their revenue stream – proposed to forge Ethereum or start mining other blockchains.
Several exchanges have expressed interest in or have already listed the forked ETHW, including Poloniex, Bitfinex and Coinbase. ETHW is down 49% from its all-time high of $141.36 on Aug. 8 to a current trading value of $29.52, according to CoinMarketCap.
According to the @EthereumPoW account, the mainnet will start 2,048 empty blocks beyond the Merge block, adding padding to ensure that the chainID – a unique identifier for distinguishing between blockchains – switches successfully and that the chain has the longest chain of ETHW is.
This offset also prevents double blocks on both ETH and ETHW.
“Therefore, the Merge block +2049 will be the first block on ETHW that can hold trades,” the account says.
EthereumPoW is the brainchild of Chinese cryptominer Chandler Guo, who announced the proof-of-work hardfork on Twitter on July 27, 2022.
ETHW critics, including Ethereum Classic developer Igor Artamonov, disagreed with the plan to launch the EthereumPoW mainnet after the merger. “It’s like losing 90% of the momentum at launch,” he wrote. “And nobody would take it seriously if it wasn’t a continuous/non-stop chain.”
Artamonov also questioned the stated motives of the hard fork.
“The main selling point could be ‘PoW is more secure’,” he tweeted. “But they sell it under ‘miners need to make money’. Why??? That’s stupid. That’s not why people would use a blockchain. ‘Security’ would be a better reason.”
Guo has not yet responded to a request for comment from decode.
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