Key Takeaways
- The exact time is to be announced 1 hour before launch with a countdown timer, and everything, including final code, binaries, config files, nodes info, RPC, explorer, etc., will be made public when the timeโs up, says the group.
- The group plans to cut ties with the main ETH blockchain under the project name ETHPoW and with the token ETHW.
The Ethereum Merge, which transitions the network from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, is just around the corner.
Despite the Merge being widely welcomed by the crypto community, some people are still not pleased with it. Within 24 hours of the Merge, a group going by the name of ETHW Core had announced its plans to hold a hard fork in protest of the transition.
โETHW mainnet will happen within 24 hours after the Merge. The exact time will be announced 1 hour before launch with a countdown timer, and everything, including final code, binaries, config files, nodes info, RPC, explorer, etc., will be made public when the timeโs up,โ the groupโs tweet reads.
The group, to retain the PoW version, proposes to cut ties with the main ETH blockchain under the project name ETHPoW and with the token ETHW.
The ETHW team has published open letters to the ETHW community, and a blog post published on August 29 detailed the groupโs intentions.
The ETHW core team explains that the group is a bunch of โgeeks and crypto investors from all over the world,โ and they are choosing to remain anonymous.
โIt is only prudent to continue a PoW Ethereum, which should be a no-brainer for those who champion openness and the free market as there is no downside. After all, if PoS Ethereum is really so great, why be afraid of competition?โ, the post reads.
The blog post further highlights that blockchain regulation is โever-increasingโ and โWeb3 narratives are under serious strain.โ
Despite the energy savings, the switch to proof-of-stake was criticized by members of the ETH community who have expressed security concerns, including the possibility of validators being informed ahead of time about which blocks are validating, which could further enable them to manipulate the price using two consecutive blocks.