Ethereum miners, The Merge has at last arrived. Thursday, September 15 was the date of the upgrade that enabled the Ethereum blockchain to employ the Proof of Stake process instead of the Proof of Work technique.
Therefore, any Ethereum projects that used Proof of Work or even miners on the blockchain are no longer applicable. Consequently, we have the right to inquire where these kids will relocate in the future.
The Merge changes things for Ethereum
The Merge having occurred, this has several implications for the future of Ethereum. Obviously, it is currently impossible to determine the extent to which this will bring about major changes for this blockchain in the long run.
On the other side, the Proof of Stake method should now lower the blockchain’s energy usage by at least 99 percent. In fact, unlike Proof of Work, which needed multiple miners to compete in the calculation of difficult equations in order to validate the network’s security, Proof of Stake no longer requires this.
With this new protocol, miners are no longer required; instead, they serve as validators who perform network security checks. These are selected at random by the algorithm, which significantly minimises Ethereum’s energy usage.
Even while the majority of users and investors embraced the news with open arms, some miners were not pleased. To continue their efforts, they must now locate a new blockchain.
Le fork Ethereum PoW
As a consequence of The Merge, new blockchains have and will emerge; this is especially true with Ethereum PoW (ETHW), which is a fork of Ethereum permitting the usage of the Proof of Work method and which became operational the day following The Merge.
Clearly, it is a clone of the Ethereum blockchain if Proof of Stake had never occurred, therefore it is the perfect blockchain for miners.
In order to continue their operations, a significant number of mining pools that previously existed have migrated to Ethereum PoW. Recently, Nanopool enabled ETHW, which is currently operational since The Merge occurred 24 hours ago.
Obviously, this bodes well for the growth of ETHW. In addition to Poolin, 2miners, Antpool, and BTC.com, several more mining pools have agreed to join the initiative.
ETHW talks more about his project
In addition to the many mining pools joining the project, there have been many new developments for ETHW in the last few days, including several developer announcements.
Particularly, we learnt in an open letter to the community that ETHW will be released within 24 hours after The Merge, a period of time sufficient to avoid wasting time. In addition, they advised miners through Twitter to remove their ETH from the Ethereum network as quickly as possible.
Since its inception, ETHW’s value has declined, however after this news, it surged and then dropped. This new asset must be given time to adjust, particularly in the context of such a complex bear market.
At the time of writing, the price of ETHW has dropped precipitously from more than $30 to less than $8 in only a few hours owing to investors’ lack of faith.
In addition to ETHW, additional rivals are available after The Merge, such as Ethereum Classic and Ravencoin, which have witnessed a significant price surge only to have their value decline in response to the current market condition.