By
Temitope Olatunji
April 18th, 2024
ETHW will continue to use the PoW mechanism, providing a way for crypto miners to continue to put their mining rigs to use.
Several Ethereum mining pools have announced they will support EthereumPoW (ETHW) after the completion of the Merge.
A few weeks ago, Chinese miner, Chandler Gu, teamed up with other developers to resist the transition of Ethereum from a PoW to a PoS mechanism. With PoW’s notorious energy consumption, the migration to PoS aimed to make the network greener. However, as a downside, it would effectively eliminate the need for miners and replace them with validators.
Consequently, Gu proposed a hard fork of the Ethereum mainnet with other developers 24 hours after the Merge. The group, known as ETHW Core, plan to maintain a PoW mechanism and continue ETH mining. In an Aug 29 statement, the group noted continuing a PoW Ethereum was a no-brainer. They said:
“If PoS Ethereum is really so great, why be afraid of competition?”
ETHW will continue to use the PoW mechanism, providing a way for crypto miners to continue to put their mining rigs to use.
The new announcement by the mining pools shows the idea is receiving some industry support. Major mining pools such as BTC.com, F2Pool, Nanopool, and Poolin will support ETHW mining. The ETHW account also announced that several mining pools were conducting mining tests using data from its testnet.
The ETHW developers have also announced a partnership with backup mining pool EthwMine.
Uncertainty Surrounds EthereumPoW (ETHW)
Meanwhile, some members of the Ethereum community have expressed uncertainty about the EthereumPoW.
Former Ethereum foundation member Hudson Jameson wrote, “I have huge doubts they will gain much hash power if they launch post-Merge.” Jameson believes the hash would be distributed across other chains by then. Also, he pointed attention to the value of ETHW, which was trading at a ticker value of $29.71 at the time.
Some others commented that money, not ideological differences, is the motivation for the hard fork. Yet another group voiced concerns about the Chain ID of the hard fork and its propensity to encourage hacks.
Despite the uncertainty, major cryptocurrency exchanges, including Coinbase and Binance, have said they may eventually list ETHW. At the time of writing, ETHW was trading at $39.51, according to CoinMarketCap.