Vitalik Buterin calls out ETHW hard fork proponents as “trying to make a quick buck”

Speaking in a closed press conference during South Korea Blockchain Week, Ethereum founder, Vitalik Buterin, called people pushing for a hard fork of Ethereum to retain proof-of-stake “simply trying to make a quick buck.”

Justin Sun recently announced support for a hard fork of Ethereum post-merge by listing two new tokens on his Poloniex exchange. The tokens will be named ETHS and ETHW, related to proof-of-stake and proof-of-work, respectively. ETHW will represent a newly created hard fork of Ethereum where GPU miners continue to mine Ethereum after the merge of the Beacon chain. Some Chinese miners have reportedly signed up to be a part of this new chain in conjunction with Justin Sun.

Further, Sun is looking to incentivize a move to fork Ethereum to retain a version of the current network within a proof-of-work chain. He is offering up to 1 million ETHW to build a developer community should the chain become realized.

We currently have more than 1 million #ETH. If #Ethereum hard fork succeeds, we will donate some forked #ETHW to #ETHW community and developers to build #ethereum ecosystem. https://t.co/ee4kGSuVoK

— H.E. Justin Sun??? (@justinsuntron) August 4, 2022

Vitalik stated that he has seen nothing but support for proof-of-stake from within the community and noted that most people who want to retain proof-of-stake are “outsiders” from the Ethereum ecosystem.

Justin Sun, the founder of the Tron blockchain, is undoubtedly an outsider to the Ethereum ecosystem by many accounts. Vitalik also referenced that proponents of a hard fork “own exchanges and are just trying to make a quick buck.”

Speaking on a question as to whether a hard fork could cause issues with NFTs living on both forked chains, Vitalik replied, “I foresee market confusion if that proof-of-work hard fork becomes something substantial.”

However, Vitalik quickly put the onus on the proof-of-work chain instead of accepting that this could cause issues with what many will consider “mainnet.” Should a fork gain traction, Vitalik expressed, “I’m sure there’s going to be problems… if they want to make a fork, it’s on them to mitigate those problems.”