Despite a difficult few weeks since its announcement, the team behind EthereumPoW (ETHW), a proof-of-work spinoff of the Ethereum Blockchain, has finally announced plans to launch its hard fork shortly after the Ethereum Merge on September 15.
“ETHW mainnet will happen within 24 hours after the merger,” the @EthereumPow Twitter account posted. “The exact time will be announced 1 hour before launch with a countdown timer and everything including final code, binaries, config files, node info, RPC, explorer, etc. will be made public when the time is up ”.
The Ethereum merger later this week will change the second largest blockchain by market capitalization to a proof of stake consensus mechanism, eliminating the need for energy-intensive mining operations. This movement has caused a fissure in the Ethereum ecosystem, as miners, unwilling to give up their income stream, proposed to fork Ethereum or start mining other blockchains.
Several exchanges have expressed interest or have already listed the forked ETHW, including Poloniex, BitfinexY base of coins. ETHW has fallen 49% from its all-time high of $141.36 on August 8 to a current trading value of $29.52, according to CoinMarketCap.
According to the @EthereumPoW account, the mainnet will initialize 2048 empty blocks beyond the Merge block, adding padding to ensure that the Chain ID, a unique identifier to differentiate between blockchains, changes successfully and that the chain is the most reliable chain. ETHW long.
This offset will also prevent duplicate blocks in both ETH and ETHW.
“Thus, the Merge + 2049 block will be the first block in ETHW that can contain transactions,” the account says.
EthereumPoW is the brainchild of the Chinese crypto miner chandler guowho announced the proof-of-work fork on Twitter on July 27, 2022.
Critics of ETHW, including Ethereum Classic developer Igor Artamonov, took issue with the plan to launch the EthereumPoW mainnet after the merger. “It’s like losing 90% of the momentum on launch alone. And no one would take it seriously if it’s not a continuous/non-stop chain,” he wrote.
Artamonov also questioned the stated reasons for the hard fork.
“The main selling point might 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.”
The main selling point might be “pow is safer”. But they sell it as “miners need to make money”. Why??? That’s stupid. That’s not why people would use a blockchain. “Security” would be a better reason 3/9
— Igor Artamonov (@splix) September 12, 2022
Guo has not yet responded to a request for comment. decipher.
