The largest Ethereum mining pool will not support PoW forks of the network

Ethermine, the largest mining pool on the Ethereum network, said it would not support any potential forks based on the Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm.

“After seven long years of research and development, the Ethereum mining phase will end on September 15, 2022. After that date, it will not be possible to mine ether using graphics cards (GPUs) or ASIC miners,” the statement reads.

After the merger, the platform will switch to output-only mode. All Stratum servers of the Ethereum pool will be shut down.

According to a statement, blockchain service operator Bitfly came to the decision “after a thorough evaluation.”

Ethermine will offer miners to join in mining one of the other cryptocurrencies:

• Ethereum Classic (ETC)
• Ravencoin (RVN)
• Ergo (ERGO)
• Beam (BEAM)

To incentivize miners, the service will zero out commissions in the pools of these coins during September.

In late July, miner Chandler Guo floated the idea of launching an offshoot of Ethereum that will continue to run on the PoW algorithm. The new network is designed to allow cryptocurrency miners to continue operations after the main blockchain moves to Proof-of-Stake (PoS).

The head of the Ethereum Classic ecosystem development organization ETC Cooperative Bob Summerville in an open letter to Go doubted the feasibility of the fork and the prospects of the new network in the event of its launch. He suggested that supporters of the project join ETC mining.

The developers of Ethereum PoW (ETHW) called the branching an “inevitable” response to a request from the community and miners. Among the objections to Summerville’s arguments, they noted that the Ethereum Classic network simply cannot accommodate the released capacity, which exceeds its hash rate by an order of magnitude.

Recall, analysts at JPMorgan admitted that ETC will be the main beneficiary of the influx of miners after the transition of Ethereum to PoS.