Experts Fear Ethereum Merge Will Lead To A Civil War, Here’s Why

The date for the Ethereum Merge is quickly approaching. If all goes according to the plan laid out by ETH devs, the merge will take place on September 19th. 

While many are bullish on the Merge, some experts are beginning to fear whether it would lead to a civil war in Ethereum. Kevin Zhou of Galois Capital revealed on Laura Shin’s Unchained Podcast that he expects at least three hard forks of Ethereum post-merge.

Jack Niewold, the founder of Crypto Pragmatist, revealed that a potential frog could be a major issue for stablecoin issues like USDT’s Tether or USDC’s Circle.

What Is The Ethereum Merge

Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, used Proof of Work as its consensus mechanism. However, due to the system’s energy consumption, it decided to change the consensus mechanism from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake.

The move is said to reduce Ethereum’s energy consumption by more than 99%. The Merge eliminates the miners used in the earlier systems and replaces them with validators. 

Difficulties Of The Merge

In a Twitter thread, Jack Niewold, the founder of Crypto Pragmatist, revealed that the chain has to fork without stopping to work. Such a transition poses many risks. According to Niewold, one of the biggest issues of the merge could be technological in nature. He believes that if the mainnet merge does not go smoothly, the chain could come grinding to a halt.

He also describes the logistical issue of the merge where it gets continued to be delayed. There have already been several incidents of postponing key events of the merge. However, the biggest issue is if miners, who will not have a mining operation post-merge, decide to fork the chain.

Such a fork can be a major issue for stablecoin issues who will have to make a choice between the PoS and PoW chains. Amber Group, a digital asset company, revealed that Ethereum miners can wreak havoc in the days leading up to the merge. They believe that small miners can eke out as much revenue as possible.