Breaking: ETC Cooperative Urges ETHPoW To Drop Ethereum Fork (ETHW) Plan

As the discussions related to Ethereum PoW hard fork turn into a heated battle, ETC Cooperative sends an open letter to prominent miner Chandler Guo, the mastermind of the Ethereum PoW hard fork.

ETC Cooperative, the organization supporting Ethereum Classic (ETC) project, strongly believes the “Ethereum PoW fork won’t work.”

ETC Cooperative Open Letter to ETHPoW Miner Chandler Guo

In an open letter to Chandler Guo, ETC Cooperative explains why they believe the Ethereum PoW hard fork would not work. Also, forking Ethereum will be the hardest thing to do now.

“At the time of the ETH/ETC chain split, supporting ETC was the simplest thing in the world to do – just keep mining. Just keep running the same client software. It was a zero-effort thing to do. The hard coordination work was all on the pro-fork side.”

In order to fork Ethereum, Chandler Guo and his team need to fork Geth, Erigon, Besu, and Nethermind codebases. Thereafter, the team must remove the proof-of-stake (PoS) transition logic that Ethereum Foundation has updated over time. Only then, Chandler Guo’s team will be able to disable the difficulty bomb and update the Chain ID to provide replay protection.

Another hard thing to do is persuade mining software authors to make changes to their mining software. Unlike the client code, many mining software are closed-source, which restricts other developers to make changes.

Moreover, Chandler Guo and his team need to convince wallet providers, exchanges, and other parties to support ETHW. Also, it is critical to work with node operators to install and run a new working client software.

Coordinating all of these will be hard and time-consuming. ETC Cooperative claims completing Ethererum PoW hard fork on time is impossible, even if Chandler Guo completes all required changes. The Merge is only weeks away.

There is no information on the website ethereumpow.org, blog posts, articles, tutorials, or other documentation related to client and software development. Open-source development is critical for any project to establish trust.

Stablecoins (USDT, USDC, etc.) will support Ethereum (ETH) or else they will go to zero. Most DeFi projects will be broken as everything in DeFi is built around stablecoins. Also, NFTs would not be recognized or supported on the ETHPoW chain.

“At the time of the ETH/ETC split there was no Defi or custodial stablecoins, so nothing really broke. Now, most of the value on ETH is in the form of tokens, not just the native Ether. So the new chain will be pretty useless to existing ETH users.”

Dragonfly Research’s article explains why “Ethereum is now unforkable.”

Vitalik Buterin, Barry Silbert, AntPool Support Ethereum Classic

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin criticizes the EthereumPoW project, saying they are “simply trying to make a quick buck.” He believes Ethereum miners can move to Ethereum Classic (ETC) post-Merge.

Barry Silbert, CEO of Digital Currency Group, parent of Grayscale, Genesis Trading, and Foundry, encourages ETH miners to switch to ETC. He is also one of the top supporters of the Ethereum Classic ecosystem.

Mining pool giant AntPool and its CEO Leon Lyu recently announced $10 million to support the Ethereum Classic ecosystem. Leon Lyu commits further investments in the projects.