Crypto wallet users are warned as scammers might get active during the potential Ethereum hard fork
The forked network will have the appearance of Ethereum, with all the apps and tokens losing their real value on it
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The much-awaited Ethereum blockchain Merge is scheduled for Thursday, September 15 at 5:05 a.m. UTC. It is a historic moment in Ethereum's evolution toward proof-of-stake. The Merge is expected to remove the need for energy-intensive mining by 99.95 per cent when compared to the existing Proof of Work (PoW) mechanism on Ethereum. Many people believe that after Ethereum switches to Proof-of-Stake (PoS), a faction of Ether (ETH) miners will fork the network back to proof-of-work (PoW) so that they can continue mining.
The forked network will have the appearance and feel of Ethereum. However, it will only be a skeleton of the real thing. All the apps and tokens will be there with no use or value. According to a Twitter thread posted by Twitter handle @EthereumPoW on Monday, Ethereum's Proof-of-Work fork will take place 24 hours after the Merge. The thread did not specify a time. However, the thread indicated that it will be 'announced 1 hour before launch with a countdown timer.'
The tweet read, "...Everything including final code, binaries, config files, nodes info, RPC, explorer, etc. will be made public when the time’s up."
Users holding ETH on-chain would have an equal balance of ETHPoW (ETHW) on the forked chain in the event of a new hard fork. The new hard fork will split the Ethereum blockchain into two separate networks. This would lead to the creation of a new token and a completely different asset than ETH. In the past, forked coins have proven to be profitable. When Ethereum (ETH) forked in 2016, holders of ETH acquired an equivalent amount of Ethereum Classic (ETC).
According to Bobby Ong, co-founder of CoinGecko, the simplest way to obtain fork airdrops is to keep ETH on exchanges that support the forks. However, he believes that storing ETH in hardware wallets will also work and will qualify a trader for all forked tokens. Most hardware wallet providers are taking the same approach: they will monitor adoption on both the new and forked chains before adding ETHPoW support. They also claim that users are not required to take any action during the upgrade.
