Tether and Circle will support Ethereum’s Proof of Stake

With just over a month to go before the adoption of Merge, an increasing number of crypto companies are announcing their support for the new Proof of Stake system on the Ethereum network, including Tether and Circle. 

After Chainlink, also Tether and Circle support Ethereum’s PoS

Following Chainlink‘s announcement a few days ago, Tether and Circle also announced almost in unison that they will fully support Ethereum’s new Proof of Stake after the arrival of the Merge update, scheduled for 19 September.

Speaking of the new Ethereum update that will switch the consensus system from PoW to PoS, the company that created the USDC stablecoin, Circle, revealed in a statement its future moves in this respect: 

“We understand the responsibility we have for the Ethereum ecosystem and businesses, developers and end users that depend on USDC, and we intend to do the right thing”.

At the same time, the company also wanted to express its views on initiatives that are emerging to keep the old PoW system alive even after the arrival of Merge: 

“While we don’t speculate on the possibility of forks post Ethereum Mainnet merge, USDC as an Ethereum asset can only exist as a single valid ‘version,’ and as stated previously, our sole plan is to fully support the upgraded Ethereum PoS chain”.

On the same wavelength, Tether (USDT), the company behind the largest stablecoin currently in circulation, also said it would wholeheartedly support this important innovation from the network founded by Vitalik Buterin.

Paolo Ardoino, CTO of Tether, revealed:

“It’s not about what I/we prefer between PoW/PoS. Stablecoins should act responsibly and avoid disruption for users. Especially for DeFi it’s really delicate”.

Some will continue to support Ethereum’s Proof of Work

Despite these important stances, there are still many who believe that Proof of Work will somehow survive the Merge update anyway. The cryptocurrency hedge fund, Galois Capital, shared a survey on 1 August in which more than 33% of respondents said they expect Ethereum to split into two chains. 

However, as Vitalik Buterin also said recently at an event in Seoul, it is unlikely that PoS will not have long-term adoption, just as it is equally unlikely that these attempts to keep the old consensus system alive again will be successful in the medium to long term.

The Merge update has had a very long journey, since the project started in December 2020, and after several postponements, it was supposed to be ready for launch in June 2022. But a problem encountered by developers during the latest testing led to a further delay, leading to 19 September being determined as the official launch date.