Miners Moving To Ethereum Classic In Anticipation For The Merger
With the much anticipated Ethereme merger commencing today, it seems that miners are beginning to switch to Ethereum classic.
As Ethereum moves to proof-of-stake tonight, the merger will also see the end of mining on the network. In response, the “original” Ethereum chain—Ethereum Classic, which was forked in 2016, has hit a new all-time high hash rate of 65.49 terahashes per second (TH/s), according to 2miners.com data.
Hashrate is the equivalent power one must need to mine a cryptocurrency. Bitcoin, ETH classic, and Ethereum (before the merge) all use proof-of-work, a process that drains a lot of energy due to the high amounts of powerful computers working on the network.
Today though, Ethereum will be making crypto history as the second largest cryptocurrency moves to a proof-of-stake blockchain, eliminating the need for miners, replacing them with validators, people who stake their ETH to keep the network running and secure.
The upgrade will make the network “99% more energy efficient,” according to the Ethereum Foundation. In addition, anyone interested in helping secure the network and passively earn some ETH by participating in the proof- of stake system can either stake 32 ETH themselves or join a staking pool through an exchange like Coinbase.
While better for the environment, this move is leaving behind the former backbone of Ethereum, its miners. Many do not have anything to do since they were correlated on mining the best-returning asset, which up until today was Ethereum. Many speculate most will move to mine Ethereum Classic and other compatible coins, such as Ravencoin.
A few days after its launch, some developers of ETH classic identified a fault in the coding that could allow bad actors to access its funding without permission. Although a proposal was put forward to fix this issue, malicious users took advantage of the situation and withdrew over $60 million worth of ETH from the DAO’s treasury.
After much debate, a hard fork was determined to be necessary to revert the Ethereum network’s history before the DAO was hacked and return the stolen funds to the proper addresses.
This resulted in the split between the Ethereum network (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC), where those who disagreed with the hard fork and reversal would support the original chain (ETC).
While not the most popular coin Ethereum Classic will now become essential to the survival of certain mining operations, it is the eighteenth-largest cryptocurrency currently, with a market cap of over $5 billion.