EthereumPoW (ETHW) is a potential hard forkof Ethereumblockchain with the upcoming Ethereum Merge. The Merge will see Ethereum transition to proof-of-stake, while the forked version would remain on proof-of-work.
EthereumPoW positions itself as “the original Proof of Work Ethereum, developed and run by the community.” However, the “original” Ethereum would be Ethereum Classic, which is the initial Ethereum blockchain that continued with the chain’s original state after ‘The DAO’ Hack.
Who Are the Founders of ETHPoW?
EthereumPoW is supported by an unknown (in quantity and name) group of ETH minersthat stand to lose from the switch to PoS. According to Messari, the Ethereum mining industry is worth an estimated $19 billion which will become obsolete with the change to PoS. Since Ethereum is mined with dedicated GPUs, miners cannot just switch to Bitcoin, which is mined with ASICs.
Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin suggested ETCas an alternative, referring to it as “totally a fine chain” for current ETH miners. However, miners seem committed to forking ETHW. Prominent names backing the fork include Justin Sun, founder of Tron, and Chandler Guo, a notable ETH miner. Poloniex, backed by Justin Sun, is the first exchange to list ETHW, and announced plans to list potential forked ETH tokens.
What Makes ETHPoW Unique?
EthereumPoW is set to copy the state of Ethereum on its PoW hard fork. At the time of writing, it was not clear whether this would imply just copying the chain state — which would allow DAppdevelopers and stablecoinissuers to choose which Ethereum chain they support — or copying the app states too, which would double the DApps and liquidity on Ethereum to EthereumPoW.
The Ethereum community fears that forking the entire chain, including all DApps and liquidity on it, will give way to frontrunners and MEVexploiting the little value left on ETHPoW at the time of the Merge. In practice, this would mean draining all liquidity poolsof the worthless forked “PoW liquidity” and redeeming it for ETHW, which is expected to retain some value initially. Several Ethereum contributors have called out the launch of ETHPoW to be exploitative and an exercise in “dumping on retail.”
How Many ETHPoW (ETHW) Coins Are There in Circulation?
With ETHW initially forking the Ethereum blockchain, the chain would start with the same circulating supplyas proof-of-stake Ethereum. However, since the post-Merge Ethereum will have a much lower inflation rate than its current PoW version, the two chains would diverge in their coin supply. If EthereumPoW continues to be mined, its supply will grow at a faster rate than that of Ethereum on PoS.
How Is the ETHPoW Network Secured?
ETHPoW will stick to the same proof-of-work mechanism Ethereum mainnet has been using since its inception. Still, at the time of writing it was unclear whether ETHPoW would, in fact, continue to be mined, given the fact that the scheduled difficulty bombis designed to make it unfeasible to mine on the PoW chain.
