Does Ethereum's new ETHPoW fork stand a chance? ETHW price falls 65% post-Merge

ETHPoW, a separatist proof-of-work (PoW) blockchain forked from Ethereum’s Merge , went live on Sept. 15. However, the chain suffered technical issues after the launch, which put downward pressure on its ETHW token.

ETHW price down 65% amid “ChainID” fiasco

The price of ETHW has dropped by 65% since ETHPoW’s launch to around $14 on Sept. 16, according to CoinMarketCap. At its lowest, the token was changing hands for $9.50.

*ETHW price performance in the past seven days. Source: CoinMarketCap*

The losses coincided with a technical issue related to ETHPoW’s ChainID.

ChainIDs are identifiers that help users identify one blockchain from another. Thus, ETHPoW required a new ChainID to separate its transaction data from the original Ethereum blockchain after the Merge, otherwise, it risked creating duplicate transactions.

Lol EthPow miners set to wrong chainID, so they’re mining testnet https://t.co/IichaPURjr
— David Trrrrrrr (@daveytea) September 15, 2022

The team behind ETHPoW announced on Sept. 15 that its unique ChainID is 10001. However, data from Chainlist shows that a cryptocurrency project called Smart Bitcoin Cash, operating under the ticker BCHT, has the same ID. This issue resulted in errors on the MetaMask cryptocurrency wallet.

The ETHPoW recognized the issue and adjusted the ChainID later on Sept. 15. However, several miners appeared to have pulled out despite a few major pools continuing to mine the PoW chain.

Notably, the ETHPoW hash rate fell to 66.64 TH/s on Sept. 16 after peaking at 80.56 TH/s earlier in the day.

*ETHPoW hashrate as of Sept. 16, 2022. Source: 2miners.com*

In comparison, the hash rate of Ethereum Classic (ETC), another PoW alternative for Ethereum miners, was 234.56 TH/s on Sept. 16 versus its peak near 310.5 TH/s the day before.

ETHW listed on some exchanges despite concerns

Eric Wall, the chief investment officer at cryptocurrency investment firm Arcane Assets, noted that ETHPoW miners could not sustain the chain at current ETHW prices. He explained:

“The daily rewards are 13100 ETH, $354k instead of $20m. There is no way miners can just “keep mining” the ETHPoW chain, no matter how you adjust the difficulty. There simply aren’t enough rewards in the system to pay for the electricity bills.”

Nevertheless, ETHW was listed at some leading cryptocurrency exchanges, including FTX and Huobi. In addition, BitTrue has also introduced an ETHW-based liquidity staking service that offers depositors a 6% annual return.

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