Ethereum hard fork proposed, novelty or do it have a use?
As the Merge is fast approaching a lot of the miners have become a bit antsy as the future of GPU mining is pretty much up in the air at this point. To be more precise, GPU mining is not going away, but it might need to scale back a bit as there is most likely no room for all the current hash power that is mining Ethereum on other coins.
EthPoW hard fork
Then as a white knight arrives to save the day, a solution appeared, that is probably what the miners who have banded together to propose this hard fork of Ethereum are hoping will happen. The fork is proposed as a way for miners to still be able to keep mining Ethereum. The only problem is it is not Ethereum, it is EthPoW, or whatever they will call it.
ETHW is just another name proposed for the Eth fork, so ETHW = EthPoW
The idea at least is that this should allow miners to keep mining something that is similar to Ethereum and should be just as profitable. Justin Sun, of Tron and USDD "fame" even said he would support the hard fork.
Let us look at the proposed hard fork to see if it has any merit
The first issue I have with it is the notion that a hard fork magically would solve anything. And I think that would be completely wrong. As it is a fork of Ethereum would have no other purpose other than to allow miners to keep mining and make the same, or similar, profits as they currently do. Sure this would keep a lot of hash power off of other PoW coins, meaning they will probably not crash.
Currently, the fork has no other purpose. And unless they come up with a system where you can use the new Eth fork as the old Eth, then why? Ethereum has a very large community and user base on the blockchain. And that is what is providing Ethereums value. It is needed as gas to keep the engines running if you will. But a fork would have nothing. No ecosystem, no dapps no nothing. Meaning it would take a lot of time for it to be anywhere near some of the smaller blockchains even. The only thing it would have going for it would be name recognition.
Without any ecosystem, the liquidity pool would just get drained over time. If not instantly. As everyone holding Eth would get an equal amount airdropped, and would look to cash out asap. In a similar way to the new LUNA coin. That is probably the most recent example. Without any ecosystem around it, you will have no influx of new liquidity. It would be very similar to pulling the plug in the bath, then wishing water would magically appear to fill it back up.
Sometimes the hardest fork serves no practical purpose at all, image featuring a diamond fork
A second issue would be what can you do with this new EthPoW? You cant swap it on any exchange. And if getting a new coin listed on exchanges would be easy then why are there so many coins unlisted? And sure, being an Eth fork will probably help this to some extent as well.
Personally, I fear this will more likely turn out to be more of a money grab. In the style of one of the many Bitcoin forks. The Etherium wales will have set up some dump bot allowing them to just instantly dump the EthPoW draining away all the liquidity. Leaving the majority of holders with just another worthless shitcoin.
And on another note, this is probably more of a personal thing. As soon as I saw Justin Sun showing interest in this it was an immediate red flag for me. It is not like he cares about PoW coins, or he would have copy pastad a PoW part into his TRON coin. So that leaves greed as the only other motivator, at least when he is concerned. And when a greedy rich person is involved then you know you basically have 0 chance.
And the last note, regarding why I think an Ethereum fork is doomed to fail. That is my opinion by the way if you were not able to figure it out yet. =) There is already a PoW Etherium form, Ethereum Classic. It is not going anywhere. And it was forked from Ethereum for a use case. And not simply because it could be mined. But will it become the new Ethereum of mining? Probably not. But then again almost anything can happen after the Merge.
I hope that you found this look at a possible Ethereum hard fork interesting. And provided you with at least my viewpoint on the topic. I would also love to hear what your thoughts on the topic are. Do you think it is a good idea to fork Ethereum, or do you think it is doomed? And please also share why you think the way you do.
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Picture provided by: https://www.midjourney.com/
