As Ethereum gets closer to its much-anticipated transition to proof-of-stake consensus, the cryptocurrency’s mining community seems to be ready to move to a fork token where they can continue to mine tokens.
As reported on September 4th, the creation of a fork token called ETHPoW (Ethereum proof-of-work) was created in order to accommodate the over 260 thousand Ethereum miners.
On Thursday, it’s expected that the Ethereum integration will finally be finished. If all goes according to plan, the update will change Ethereum’s consensus algorithm from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, significantly lowering its environmental effect.
Since Ethereum mining is due to be eliminated after the merge, the Ethereum mining community will become obsolete.
The ETHPoW group tweeted that “ETHW mainnet will happen within 24 hours after the Merge” in reference to the new project “ETHPoW” and its token “ETHW.”
A countdown timer will be used to broadcast the precise moment an hour before to launch.
“The mainnet will start at the block height of the Merge block ‘plus’ 2048 EMPTY blocks as padding,” the ETHPoW Twitter account posted online. “Therefore, the Merge block +2049 will be the first block on ETHW that may contain any transactions. Block rewards for the empty blocks will be directed to the 1559 multi-sig wallet.”
If all goes according to plan, the EthereumPoW chain will start processing transactions 2,049 blocks following the merge.
ETHPoW Price Rose After Twitter Announcement
Following the announcement of ETHPoW to start the fork just 24 hours after the merge, investors saw the initiative with apparent optimism.
ETHPoW’s token, ETHW rose by 58% in less than a day, hitting the $45 dollar mark before retracting back to around $30.
However, ETHPoW’s current price is still far from its opening market value when the token was launched in August 14th.
ETHPoW’s opening price was said to be set as 1.5% of Ether, however, since its launch, the token has dropped from $66 dollars to today being valued at around half of that amount.
As the merge nears, miners and investors look forward to ETHW raising its market value as part of the mining community takes on the forked token.
Dangers of Fork Tokens
Ether’s price volatility, which is anticipated to occur in the hours before and after the integration, will have an impact on the token’s value.
However, holding ETH to earn ETHPOW exposes you to the ETH’s price volatility. A drop in the price of ETH would reduce the profit generated by obtaining ETHPOW for nothing and selling it on the spot market.
