Ethermine Will Stop Supporting Ethereum PoW As The Merge Nears
The countdown to the much-awaited Merge on the Ethereum network is fast approaching. The scheduled date is September 15. However, a group of detractors, the aggrieved Ethereum miners, are planning to hardfork the platform’s blockchain. They want to continue using the Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus protocol because it keeps them relevant.
Goodbye ETH Miners
Still, the largest Ethereum mining pool, Ethermine, decided not to offer any more mining activity for the runaway PoW consensus. Ethereum will shut down all its stratum servers. Thus, miners would not be able to connect their tools to the Ethermine pool.
According to the development team, the Ethereum Ethermine pool would switch to withdraw-only mode. This happens once the transition to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) is completed.
A timer on the miners’ dashboards will provide information on the scheduled dates. To cash out the unpaid balances, miners must trigger the withdrawal via their dashboard. Manual payouts are only possible when the outstanding balance exceeds 0.005 ETH.
ETH PoW Supporters at Work
Fans of the Ethereum PoW have already started putting things together for the planned development of an alternative consensus protocol. On August 15, the team released a statement indicating that three significant features of the PoW version are ready for deployment.
In addition, the ETHW core also launched the liquidity pool freezing tool for asset protection. According to them, tokens in liquidity pools are prone to hacking and disrupting the community’s security. As a result, the group decides to freeze some liquidity pool tokens to protect users temporarily.
Ethereum mining is no longer sustainable as the network aims to reduce energy consumption. This leaves many expensive mining tools idle, and as expected, miners are agitated. Miners feel left behind by the web and are trying to disrupt the planned transition to PoS.
Miners want to hard fork the network before the switch to PoS, but hardforking Ethereum would not be easy.
Crypto Twitter Debates on Hardfork
Unsure of which side to pitch their tent with, some crypto community members on Twitter have questioned the motive behind the hard fork move.
Many opined that miners in favor of hardfork are already benefiting from it. However, others note that the rewards are insufficient to cover the rising cost of mining infrastructure.
The value of ETH is yet to increase, meaning miners cannot cover their initial capital. Furthermore, if Ethereum’s price did not improve, they would lose money. And if they did not attempt to fork Ethereum, they would sink further.
Because most people in crypto are not miners, leaving miners behind is seen as usual by the industry. As a result, miners have decided to take a stand, forking Ethereum to remain in business.
Meanwhile, the planned hard fork was challenging to achieve for the Ethereum miners. It will be interesting to see how others will not get themselves invoked in the ensuing debates.
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