The Ethereum [ETH] network has been the talk of the crypto town for various reasons. While the Merge is undoubtedly one of them, the prospects of a hard fork are also in discussion. With the Merge, the importance or relevance of miners in the Ethereum network would be negated. Since this would disrupt the livelihood of many, Chandler Guo, a Chinese crypto miner, decided to stand up for these miners. Guo has been intensively inclined towards the idea of forking the Ethereum network post the Merge. While some remain dubious of its occurrence, others have been positive. However, the largest ETH mining pool wasn’t in support of Guo’s idea.
Ethermine, the largest Ethereum mining pool, wrote a blog post highlighting the end of the PoW mining phase of the network. The platform noted that it wouldn’t offer a “dedicated mining pool for any of the planned PoW fork.“
The PoW hard fork has garnered support from platforms like Poloniex, BitMEX, and others. However, a majority of them have steered away from the same. An array of them has been pitching the use of Ethereum Classic [ETC] for those who intend to move forward with a PoW chain.
Etheremine also suggested that its miners join the Ethereum Classic pool instead. The firm even offered a 0% fee on its Ethereum Classic, Ravencoin, Ergo & Beam mining pool throughout September.
It seems like small miners were more inclined towards forking the network as opposed to large mining pools. Previously, an executive from Flexpool, a Canadian mining pool operator, said,
“It’s like a typewriter company. No one is buying typewriters anymore, so you have to shift into other businesses using the capital you made in typewriters.”
Next steps to follow for Ethereum miners
The platform pointed out how mining Ether would become impossible using Graphic Cards [GPUs] or ASICs following the Merge. Miners were notified that the mining pool would transform into withdraw-only mode after the network’s PoW phase ends.
Elaborating on what miners should do, Ethermine wrote,
“In order to receive a final payout of your unpaid balance, it will be possible to trigger a manual payout on your individual Dashboard page. It is possible to request a manual payout if your unpaid balance exceeds 0.005 ETH. For manual payouts, the transaction fee will be deducted from your unpaid balance.”