One of the significant discussions surrounding the Ethereum Merge launch is the hard fork of the Proof-of-Work. The set a date for the Merge is just a few days away from now, and expectations are getting high for the Ethereum community. The network will finally transit to a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism after the upgrade.
The Merge will join the ETH mainnet and the Beacon Chain to become a single network. The Beacon Chain is already operating as a PoS network. It is the engine power for the Ethereum 2.0 network developed with the staking smart contract. Hence, transaction validations on Beacon Chain have been through staking.
But the Ethereum mainnet is still functioning as a PoW network. With the Merge launch in September 2022, the network will complete its upgrade and become a PoS blockchain. This will stop the miners from operating as validators on the networks.
Miners Ready For PoW Fork After Ethereum Merge
A group of Ethereum miners has been demanding an ETH PoW fork after the Merge. With many discussions and plans in place, the community may witness a hard fork once the transition to the PoS is completed.
From a Twitter thread post on EthereumPoW’s account, the hard for will commence after 24 hours of the Merge. The post gave no specific time for the fork. But it stated that it would disclose that when it’s just one hour to the Merge.
According to the post, a countdown timer will indicate the final steps, such as binaries, node info, explorer, config files, RPC, and others.
Possible Support For Forked Tokens
As the plans for the forked Ethereum tokens progress, there have been different reactions. The value of the forked token is usually lower than the normal Ether. So, the possibility of getting any economic deal from the forked tokens depends on having support in the crypto industry. Hence, some nodes must continue to run on the old PoW after the Merge.
Many crypto exchanges have declined to offer any support for forked tokens after the Merge. However, some platforms, such as Chainlink and OpenSea, indicated that their support is entirely for the Ethereum PoS.
Some crypto exchanges have already pledged their support for the forked tokens. Some of them are BitMEX, Poloneix, and others. It plans on crediting users with tokens from the minority fork for the leading global exchange. But it will use a 1:1 ratio and keep the ETH ticker for the new PoS chain.
Ethereum is likely to touch $1,600 on the chart l Source: ETHUSDT on TradingView.com
BitMEX reportedly agreed that it could provide leverage trading for the forked ETH once the Merge completes.
On its part, Poloniex stated that it would be the first to offer its support to the forked tokens from the EthereumPoW. Furthermore, the exchange promised to list ETHS and ETHW, the possible forked tokens.
Featured image from Pexels, chart from TradingView.com
