ETHW mainnet launch: ETHPoW advocates vow to continue mining despite Ethereum Merge
13:23, 16 September 2022
Ethereum may now officially be a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain following The Merge, but its proof-of-work (PoW) version lives on. On 15 September 2022, Ethereum’s original blockchain finally merged with the Beacon Chain, which first launched on 1 December 2020.
The crypto world largely cheered the transition, which it has been estimated should cut Ethereum’s energy consumption by 99.98% and shave 0.2% off the world’s energy consumption.
But not everyone is excited...
What is your sentiment on ETH/USD?
ETH to US dollar
ETHW genesis
A group of ETH developers, who have come together as the ETHW Core, came out against the network’s transition to proof-of-stake.
“PoS is indeed a game changer, but only in bad ways,” wrote ETHW Core in an open letter last month. “Nevertheless, PoW has a 12-year track record of being reliable, robust, and censorship resistant.
“It is only prudent to continue a PoW Ethereum, which should be a no-brainer for those who champion openness and the free market as there is no downside. After all, if PoS Ethereum is really so great, why be afraid of competition?”
Since then, ETHW Core launched its mainnet within eight hours following The Merge, as it had previously signaled. The move – known as a hard fork – split the PoW chain from the newly-merged Ethereum one and gave a birth to a new token, ethereumPoW (ETHW).
A plethora of mining pools, including F2Pool, Poolin, AntPool and 2miners, have carried on mining after the mainnet launch.
In addition, a number of cryptocurrency exchanges, including OKX or Kraken, have also started distributing the new chain’s token to ETH holders.
The token ETHW has been on a wild ride so far – experiencing lows of $9.29 and heights of $28.86 over the last 24 hours, data from CoinMarketCap shows.
Markets in this article
Related topics
