Five days ago, the influential Chinese crypto miner, Chandler Guo, explained that a proof-of-work (PoW) version of Ethereum is “coming soon” as the community prepares for the network’s transition to proof-of-stake (PoS) next month. As usual, the idea of a forked token gets people excited and some individuals get upset, and even though the token hasn’t been created yet, there’s now a website called ethereumpow.org summarizing the coin’s goals.
Merge Upgrade Could Add Ethereum PoW Fork, Poloniex to List of 2 ‘Potentially Forked’ Ethereum Token Markets
If Ethereum (ETH) transitions to a full PoS blockchain next month, there is a very good chance that the PoW version will move away from the current version. The merge has a pencil-in date that can be the week of September 19th or 44 days from now. Guo is a well-known crypto miner and played a prominent role in the creation of the blockchain network Ethereum Classic (ETC) in 2016. On August 1, Bitcoin.com News reported Guo tweeting about a PoW version of Ethereum “coming soon” and how he said, “ETH is PoW DAO.”
Now there’s a new website touting the not-yet-born ethereum PoW version called ethereumpow.org, and the web portal claims a white paper is coming soon. The website’s “community [and] contributors” section says: “It takes a village to raise our Ethereumpow. Numbers of communities, exchanges, miners, and individuals have worked together to make ETHW possible.” Domain statistics from Whois records indicate that the web portal was registered on July 31, 2022. The ETHW website owner’s name and identity has been “redacted for privacy,” the internet record listing site says.
Tron’s Justin Sun-backed cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex has announced that the trading platform will list ETHW. After Poloniex tweeted about listing ETHW, Sun retweeted the announcement to its 3.3 million Twitter followers. “Ethereum Merger Expected in September 2022,” Exchange wrote, “Poloniex was the first exchange in the world to list ETH and now the first to support the potential forking of ETH with a list of two potentially forked ETH tokens: ETHS and ETHW.”
Poloniex Led the Charge During ETC’s Creation
Poloniex was also the first exchange to list ethereum classic (ETC). In a now-deleted tweet, one of the members of the Slock.it development team, Stephan Tual, remarked about Poloniex “leading the charge.” At the time, the Poloniex ‘troll-box’ was going wild and the exchange saw roughly $11.89 million in ETC trade volume on July 24, 2016. While it has experienced a number of 51% attack hiccups, ETC still exists today as it’s currently the 19th largest crypto asset in terms of market valuation. In an interview with Bloomberg, Chandler Guo talked about the advantages of ETHW in comparison to ETC.
Born at ETH block height 1,920,001, Ethereum Classic has made gains from the penciled-in merge date, and has gained 51.2% over the past two weeks, and ETC is up 148.5% over the past 30 days. There has also been a slight increase in the hash rate in ETC, but over the past week, the growth in the hash rate of ETC has moderated. A few months before the most recent hash rate spike, ETC maintainers wrote that the community welcomed Ethash miners to the Ethereum Classic ecosystem.
Bitmex Research: ‘It Is Likely That the Chain Is Extended Past the Merge Point, However, Whether or Not This Chain Has Any Economic Significance Is an Open Question’
Furthermore, on August 1, Bitmex Research published a blog post called “ETHPoW vs ETH2,” which examines a hypothetical debate over the two potential Ethereum networks. The blog post, written by Bitmex Research, concludes “by arguing that although the ETHPoW chain may have many technical challenges and its long term viability is in question, its existence may provide an exciting opportunity for traders and speculators in the short to medium term.”
In addition to Poloniex, Huobi Global plans to list any potential forks that are created when the merger takes place. The company said on Friday that Huobi will distribute forked assets if they meet specific requirements. It will be interesting to see how traders and speculators value the ETHW token when Poloniex releases its “Potential Fork” token market next week. It is quite possible that the futures market could undermine ETC’s recent gains.
