Over $5B Worth of Ethereum Miners Faced With Abandonment After The Merge

A large number of Ethereum miners are looking for a solution. As Ethereum’s merge draws nearer, there is an increasing possibility of its miners deciding to fork the chain to continue mining a proof-of-work network.

Ethereum miners could decide to fork the mainnet 

According to a survey by crypto hedge fund Galois Capital, 33% of respondents believed that Ethereum’s merge could create two chains as miners decide to continue operations on a proof-of-work version of the popular blockchain.

 WuBlockchain also identified the possibility of Ethereum undergoing a chain split post-merge. They further explained that the GPU industry behind Ethereum miners was worth over $5 billion, and these machines needed a way to continue mining.

“At present, there are nearly 5 billion US dollars of graphics card mining machines and ASIC Ethereum mining machines (A11 E9) that need to find a way to continue mining after Ethereum turns to POS in September. Most belong to Chinese miners.”

They explained

ETC is an alternative option

According to their analysis, the Ethereum situation for its miners post-merge could play out in three ways.

The first is that the Ethereum miners will decide to support Ethereum Classic. The second option is the new miners will fork Ethereum to create a new chain operating on a proof-of-work network. The third scenario is Ethereum miners opting for other proof-of-work blockchains such as Kadena, StarCoin, Alea, Nervos Network (CKB), and Flux.

As mentioned in a previous Coincu article, it seems that the majority of miners have started converting their mining to Ethereum Classic (ETC) after Ethereum (ETH) has set a specific date for the consolidation to Proof-of-Stake (PoS).

MIAMI — AntPool, the mining pool affiliated with mining rig giant Bitmain, has invested $10 million to support the Ethereum Classic ecosystem and plans to continue investing more, the pool’s CEO, Lv Lei, said at Bitmain’s World Digital Mining Summit on July, 26th.

The PoS protocol will fundamentally alter how Ethereum validates blocks, adds them to the blockchain, and generates new ether (ETH). This will render obsolete the necessity for specialized mining rigs.

Ethereum classic’s hash rate rose by 50% in week. Its active addresses have also increased by 70.62%, and daily transactions are up 62.60% in the same month. The increment of on-chain metrics points to a scenario whereby Ethereum Classic could eventually benefit from Ethereum ceasing its operations as a Proof-of-work network.

DISCLAIMER: The Information on this website is provided as general market commentary and does not constitute investment advice. We encourage you to do your own research before investing.

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