Developers of the Ethereum proof-of-work (PoW) hard fork have decided to disband.
According to a Dec. 19 announcement, the core EthereumPoW development team will be dissolved to “achieve full autonomy.” Thereafter, the EthereumPoW blockchain will continue to run with PoW as the main consensus for the chain and decentralized governance “to become a deity-less public chain.”
Meanwhile, existing EthereumPoW servers will be transferred to OneDAO, a decentralized protocol on the Harmony network, for “transitional maintenance until long-term ecological partners are identified.” Jadal Page, core developer of Ethereum PoW, wrote:
“We have explored and validated the feasibility of ETHW operating independently without Core’s support, confirming the fundamental technical and operational conditions for ETHW in such a scenario.”
The EthereumPoW blockchain was hard forked from the Ethereum mainnet just prior to the completion of the Ethereum Merge upgrade in September 2022, which transferred the network from PoW to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, thereby reducing mainnet energy usage by 99%.
Developers dissatisfied with the increased centralization of the new Ethereum PoS consensus, alongside miners upset over the loss of mining revenue, created EthereumPoW to preserve the original Ethereum.
However, on Sept. 20, exchange-traded fund operator Grayscale Investments pulled the plug on supporting post-Merge Ethereum PoW tokens (ETHW). In its decision, Grayscale pointed out that ETHW has yet to develop “meaningful liquidity, while the products’ custodian doesn’t support such tokens.” As a result, the firm’s rights to buy and sell ETHW tokens for its clients could not be fulfilled.
Related: Ethereum community adopts ERC-3643 as standard for compliant asset tokenization
ETHW tokens reached an all-time high of $100 in August 2022, when they were first launched, but have now fallen to $2.59. Its total market capitalization stands at $279 million.
