Last week, Chandler Guo, a prominent Chinese cryptocurrency miner, expressed his disapproval of The Merge update and proposed a hard fork of Ethereum, splitting the network and maintaining mining through Proof of Work (PoW).
With that, Guo advocated the creation of EthereumPOW (ETHW), a version of the network that will maintain the current mining consensus. And Tron creator Justin Sun announced that Guo's proposal has his support.
In addition, the Poloniex exchange went further and if the split happens, users will be able to trade the token on the platform.
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Poloniex supports Ethereum hard fork
Currently, Ethereum works on a PoW model that allows so-called miners to create ETH by channeling huge amounts of computing power. In this sense, the network works with the same algorithm used by Bitcoin.
However, the developers believe that PoS will bring more benefits to ETH and less impact on the environment. Therefore, they intend to use a new algorithm to make the blockchain faster and more scalable, thus supporting more transactions.
But The Merge will end mining operations, which would be a blow to miners like Guo. Because of this, he and others are trying to launch ETHW to allow individuals to continue mining some form of ETH. And Poloniex decided to side with the miners.
Via Twitter, the exchange said it would "fully support both the Ethereum upgrade and its hard fork." And support will start soon: starting August 8, the exchange will allow users to trade ETH for ETHW and vice versa.
Each ETH will be worth 1 ETHW at this first time of trading. Poloniex will also launch ETHS, a cryptocurrency representing ETH PoS. It should be noted that the developers' forecast is to implement The Merge until September 19.
If ETH successfully implements The Merge on that date, Poloniex will automatically convert all ETHS to ETH. ETHW will turn into a separate token if Guo and his followers manage to hard fork Ethereum. Otherwise, Poloniex will suspend and delete ETHW from its platform.
Justin Sun advocates Proof of Work
Poloniex's main investor is Justin Sun, CEO of Tron. And when the stock market broke the news, Sun also stood up for Guo and his group.
On twitter Sun advocated PoW as a mining engine and claimed that ETH owes much of its expansion to this engine.
“We have witnessed the [PoW] consensus mechanism as a key factor driving the expansion of the ETH ecosystem. And we are willing to continue to support the development of the community,” said Sun.
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