The long-waited Ethereum merge is finally going to happen on September 15, this Thursday. As the second largest blockchain by market capitalization, Ethereum will switch from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism to address the controversial issue of energy-consuming mining process. The merge will reduce 99.95% of the energy Ethereum consumes and it will be easier to scale the ecosystem easier in the future with Ethereum 2.0.
Understanding the Ethereum Merge: PoW vs PoS
The original Ethereum blockchain (Mainnet) is powered by PoW, which takes massive computing power to solve complicated mathematical equation for mining new tokens and validating transactions. The merge represents running Beacon Chain in parallel using PoS, while Ethereum Mainnet continues to secure all the accounts, smart contracts and other information. The merge aims to bring two mechanism together and eventually use PoS system indefinitely.
In other words, the production of new blocks will no longer require mining nodes. Instead, it requires node operators to stake 32 Ether (ETH) as collateral to be able to earn rewards. During the merge, all history will be remained and the funds are safe. There’s nothing Ether holders need to worry about.
What will happen after the Ethereum Merge?
Scenario 1: No new token is created.
Scenario 2: The ETHW chain persists.
An Ethereum fork – EthereumPoW has announced their plan after the merge on Twitter. They are the resistors of the merge. It is saying that: “ETHW 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 time’s up.”
See more detail in Twitter thread: ETHW Core Announced the Plan for Mainnet
Obviously, some of the miners of Ethereum ecosystem are not happy about giving up the revenue streaming from mining. This means the merge resistors may create a new network and cryptocurrency in paralleled with Ethereum.
Closing Thoughts
Some people believe that PoW is the sell point that ensure the security better than PoS. On the other hand, some people believe that with Beacon Chain Ethereum will be more scalable and sustainable. Can the merge resistors succeed? MEXC is excited to see what’s next following this revolutionary change in cryptocurrency.
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