Ethereum Proof of Work (ETHPoW)
As we all know by now, the Ethereum merge is coming very soon. It's set to complete on September 15th, and will disable Proof of Work on the Ethereum main net. This will switch the consensus protocol on Ethereum from Proof of Work mining to Proof of Stake. Of course, people are seeing an opportunity to capitalize on the hard fork to try and keep the Proof of Work chain running. Just like when the DAO hack happened back in the day and Ethereum Classic forked to include the hack instead of rolling back the chain.
The hard fork that will enable Proof of Stake on the Ethereum main network is going to result in community members attempting to keep the classic chain alive. They could just call it Ethereum Classic, but as you may or may not know, we already have an Ethereum Classic, known as ETC. Some exchanges have already signaled support for the ETHPoW chain which isn't really surprising. That's just more trading fee revenue for them at the end of the day.
This is the power of decentralization at its core though, and even though I don't necessarily support the birth of the new ETHPoW chain... It could be a good thing for some people I guess. I'm not going to say I think it's bad that a community of Ethereum OGs want to keep the Proof of Work chain alive but I just don't see the point. The whole idea of Ethereum going through the shift away from Proof of Work is that it's going to make it insanely scalable and more decentralized.
Why do we need yet another fork of Ethereum that supports Proof of Work mining when we already have Ethereum Classic? I think most of my concern lies in the fact that these forked chains will be vulnerable to 51% attacks. Hell, Ethereum Classic has been around for a long time and has suffered multiple different attacks... For some reason people still use it and claim that it's the real Ethereum. I guess that's just how far our intelligence has devolved since the launch of magic internet money.
As I stated previously, I think the main incentive for anyone to even try to do this is the potential to airdrop and sell tokens. These forked chains are going to go through pump and dump cycles just like every new token that launches... Just on a much larger scale. I think the other incentive is the fact that the creators of these forked chains will be able to control large amounts of the tokens that they mint for them... It's going to be messy in my opinion.
Vitalik Buterin himself has shown his concern about PoW forked Ethereum chains and suggested that people shift their mining to Ethereum Classic. Look, if you have mining rigs that are going to be useless on the Ethereum main net soon... You might as well use them for something. Personally, I'd shift their mining to Ethereum Classic as Vitalik suggests because it's at least got a couple years of history.
I do sincerely hope that if they do succeed in creating this successful PoW chain... They at least make sure that the community is put first. I really hope it isn't looked at as a cash grab by the very people behind it. After seeing scam after scam and all kinds of crazy shit go down since I started with crypto in 2016... I have trouble having faith in projects like this.
I don't support it at all, but I don't wish any negativity toward it. I'm curious to know how the LeoFinance community feels about the ETHPoW fork coming soon? Is it going to be used, is it going to be pump and dumped, or is it going to become the "real Ethereum Classic"?
Lemme know what you think.
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