As Ethereum has come within an inch of being a fully proof-of-stake blockchain, rumbling and grumbling among miners seem to be on the rise...It should come as no surprise though because when the Ethereum transition is finally in place, miners will have the option of either getting rid of their expensive machines or switching to Ethereum Classic which is by no means a rival to ETH.
When such sharp turns occur in crypto, it is easy to expect someone to fork the network and gather their supporters around them. It has happened multiple times with Bitcoin, generating Bitcoin cash, bitcoin Gold, and Bitcoin SV... It also happened with Hive/Steem chains. And this is what will most likely occur with ETH, as the merge resisters, miners, and some crypto figures have combined their efforts to launch what they call ETHW (Ethereum proof of work). This new chain will continue to adopt the old proof-of-work consensus mechanism of Ethereum.
Success vs Failure:
History tells us that most forks go into oblivion after a while of their inception as they often fail to attract developers, investors, and loyal users. However, it also tells us that a few continue to survive and thrive, in some cases even more than the original itself. Bitcoin Cash is an example of a fork that has coexisted with BTC, not that it's close to it, but it is still up there among the top 100 cryptocurrencies.
Hive is an example of a fork that has managed to attract most of the community and developers, heck, Ethereum itself is technically a fork that occurred after the infamous DAO hack of 2016...
So, the question of whether or not the upcoming ETHW will attain any degree of success is still up in the air, but it will certainly depend on the number of exchanges that will be ready to list it, the number of applications that will be willing to live on it, and last but not least, the investors that will be throwing money into it...
We can't tell the future but we can predict about it, so let's see who is insisting to be on the old POW boat, and thus we might be able to imagine a little bit of the future of ETHW...
Proponents vs opponents:
The big elephant in the room is no other than the controversial crypto figure Justin Sun who pushed for his own centralized exchange Poloniex to list ETHW in advance. This move was not so welcomed in the crypto space as some regarded it to be a "plot" on Justin's part to distract the Eth community in the hardest times. After all, Tron is a direct competitor to Ethereum, and Justin has always had a less-than-perfect relationship with Vitalik. In his defense though, Justin assures that he supports both versions of ETH and that he only wants to provide POW supporters room to grow. Well, I find it a little hard to believe given Justin's long history of knocking ETH on all possible occasions...
Another high-profile person that is riding the POW boat is Chandler Guo, a BTC and ETH miner and crypto angel investor, Who claimed to be able to fork the network with all the costs and difficulties that this entails. You know, a network the size of ETH with over 200 million active users, 10 million addresses, and thousands of NFT and Defi projects would never be easy to recreate. But Chandler Guo believes there is enough room in the crypto industry for both versions of Ethereum...
the Merge offers benefits, but it will also wreck the business of miners who depend on the PoW model to earn Ether cryptocurrency, says Chandler Guo...source
Back to exchanges, the Justin-backed Poloniex exchange was, of course, the hastiest to support ETHW. The two Chinese exchanges, MEXC and Gate.io, soon followed suit. Other medium-sized exchanges such as BitMEX will seemingly list ETHW. However, major global ones such as Coinbase, Kucoin, and Binance haven't been as excited. The latter stated it would list ETHW only if met its requirements
And as you may have imagined, Vitalik himself is not too happy with the potential fork. At a meeting in South Korea, he emphasized that POW supporters can easily switch to Ethereum Classic where there is already "a superior community and a superior product" instead of creating a new chain. He even called out those who want to fork the network "as outsiders who own exchanges just want to make a quick buck"... I think it is quite obvious who he meant, lol...
A couple of outsiders basically have exchanges and mostly just want to make a quick buck," Buterin said. "So I'm not expecting it to have substantial, long-term adoption. source
In terms of price, well, here's a screenshot talking for itself...
Keep calm and get some "free money":
Finally, I think the ETHW fork is going to occur one way or another and in that case, it will be fun to have some "free money" in the process. Nothing guarantees whether it is going to pump or dump in the coming days, but if you have Ethereum, you may be interested to transfer it into one of those exchanges which support ETHW or simply keeping it in a non-custodial wallet (MetaMask) and waiting for the fork to happen to claim your new coins...
What do you guys think about the upcoming ETHW fork? I'm keen to read you opinions and thoughts.
PS, Unless otherwise stated, all images in this post are either my own design or from free photo-sharing sites (e.g. pixabay.com)