Ethereum proof-of-work hard fork will launch 24 hours following the Merge on September 15, according to a Twitter thread published by ETHW.
ETHW Core Announced the Plan for Mainnet#ethereum #ethw #ethereummerge #ethereumfork $ethw $eth #ethpow
1/n pic.twitter.com/cnYOW6l1iU
— EthereumPoW (ETHW) Official #ETHW #ETHPoW (@EthereumPoW) September 12, 2022
ETHW is the team behind the Ethereum PoW hard fork splinter from the Ethereum mainnet.
They also divulged the precise timing of the fork would be announced 1 hour before its launch, with all data “including the final code, binaries, config files, nodes info, RPC, explorer” to be “made public when the time’s up.”
What will happen to Ethereum PoW post-Merge
The Merge will see the Ethereum mainnet switch its consensus mechanism from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, removing the energy impact from PoW mining. Ethereum miners will be supplanted by validators, which drove miners to launch the Ethereum PoW fork to continue running the old PoW network.
The PoW and PoS chains will run in parallel post-Merge. If the PoS chain performs well and boosts the value of ETH, it may cause applications and tokens on the PoW version to decrease in value.
ChainID switch
The ETHW team said the PoW mainnet will start at the block height of the Merge block and additional 2048 empty blocks as padding to ensure the chainID switches to chainID 10001 successfully and the chain will be the longest chain of ETHW.
The team confirmed it will use chainID 10001 instead of the current chainID 10002 to differentiate itself and prevent replay attacks or duplicate and forge blocks on the two chains on the Ethereum mainnet.
Backers of ETHW
Several exchanges are supporting ETHW and have begun listing IOU versions of the ETHW token, including Gate.io, Phemex, DigiFinex, and CoinW.
If the fork is successful, IOU ETHW tokens can be swapped for ETHW tokens on a 1:1 basis after the Merge.
Exchanges that have listed ETHW include Coinbase, Poloniex, and Bitfinex.