EthereumPoW (ETHW) announces post-merge mainnet plans

As Ethereum moves closer to the merge event, the core team looking to continue with the proof-of-work (PoW) chain has outlined plans to launch its mainnet after the ETH 2.0 upgrade goes live.

EthereumPoW (ETHW) announced the expected chain launch via Twitter, stating that the ETHW chain will go live in the 24 hours that follow the Merge.

Are you looking for fast-news, hot-tips and market analysis?

Sign-up for the Invezz newsletter, today.

“ETHW mainnet will happen within 24 hours after the Merge. The exact time will be announced 1 hour before launch with a countdown timer and everything including final code, binaries, config files, nodes info, RPC, explorer, etc. will be made public when the time’s up.”

ETHPOW first block

According to the team, the ETHPOW mainnet is set to start at the Ethereum merge’s block height ““plus” 2048 EMPTY blocks.” These, they note, will be included “as padding to make sure that the chainID switches to 10001 successfully and the chain is the longest chain of ETHW.”

The Merge has been a long time coming and this week sees great anticipation from the community following several delays in the past two years. When the next upgrade happens via Paris, the Ethereum mainnet (currently a PoW network), will merge with PoS network Beacon Chain to continue as one PoS network.

One main impact of this is the removal of ETH mining as a mechanism for processing transactions and securing the system, and replacing it with staking. Some miners who have massive investments in mining equipment are therefore looking to continue mining.

As Invezz reported last week, the Merge and the Fed policy are two of the biggest narratives in the market today, which means a spike in volatility is likely.

For crypto, some industry experts see the merge as an ‘overpowering narrative’ that is opening up investing opportunities in several projects.