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Most members of the Ethereum community are counting down the days until the “merger” of the network, a massive upgrade that promises to increase its efficiency and significantly reduce its environmental impact.
But while the upcoming merger has caused excitement in the Ethereum community, it has also sparked criticism of the assumption.
The merger will move Ethereum from a proof-of-work consensus model to a proof-of-stake model, and not everyone is happy about it. For example, some are opposing the merger, touting the potential continuation of the “ETH PoW” (“Ethereum proof-of-work”) chain after the upgrade.
During a telephone conversation with reporters on Friday evening, Buterin acknowledged movement ETH PoWbut its it not very worried.
“I don’t expect another fork to really hurt Ethereum that much,” Buterin said, referring to the controversial hard fork or blockchain split in 2016 that created a separate chain known as Ethereum Classic. “I was under the impression that almost everyone I spoke to in the Ethereum ecosystem that they fully supported the proof-of-stake efforts and united around it.”
Mostly – and not surprisingly – interest in ETH PoW is currently driven by Ethereum miners, such as the famous Chinese cryptocurrency miner Chandler Guo, because miners have something to lose after Ethereum’s transition to Proof-of-Stake: their income.
Currently, using proof of work, Ethereum miners verify transactions on the network and in turn are rewarded with tokens using very expensive hardware and processing power. Some miners have invested tens of thousands of dollars to mine Ethereum and make a living.
With Proof-of-Stake, Ethereum will rely on a trusted network of validators, which forever save him from mining. For this reason, miners can try to continue the Ethereum proof-of-work chain, no matter how unlikely or risky the attempt is, in order to keep their investment safe.
Basically, according to Buterin, those pushing for a fork are just “a couple of underdogs who basically own exchanges and most of them just want to make a quick buck,” he said. “So, I don’t expect it to have significant long-term adoption, simply because I think Ethereum Classic already has a great community and a great product for proof-of-work people.”
But that doesn’t mean we won’t see “a couple of signs” as Ethereum changes.
“If the Proof-of-Work fork gets big, then there will definitely be a lot of applications that will have to choose one path or the other,” Buterin said, adding that if ETH PoW gets significant support, he expects a lot of confusion in the market. and problems. “Hopefully, no matter what happens, people don’t lose money.”
Even if this is done, the production of ether (ETH) will not continue after the merger of the forked proof-of-work chain. Miners will have to create a new coin (and a new name for the coin) for what they are mining and hope that it will be accepted by the masses, while Ethereum itself will remain exclusive to Ethereum on its new Proof-of-Stake chain. The same goes for apps and projects, Buterin said.
“From what I’ve seen,” he said, “they’ll all be in favor of proof of stake.”
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