A group of miners and developers are planning to fork the Ethereum blockchain after the Merge upgrade, which is expected to take place between September 13 and September 15, as a result of which $ETH holders could get $ETHW tokens via an airdrop.

As you probably already know, the Merge marks the transition of Ethereum from Proof of Work (PoW) consensus to Proof of Stake (PoS). The new PoW version of Ethereum — provisionly called “ETHPoW” — will get its transaction history from the current version of the Ethereum Mainnet (which uses PoW consensus also) just before the Merge update is applied to it, which means that all token balances and smart contracts will be copied. Therefore, all those holding $ETH on-chain will have the same number of $ETHW on the new ETHPoW blockchain.

The fork, commonly referred to as ETHPoW, will share the same transaction history as the main Ethereum network but start creating its own blocks after the Merge update goes live. Because the PoW fork starts from the Ethereum network’s pre-Merge state, all token balances and smart contracts will also be carried over. This means that everyone holding ETH on-chain will end up having an equal balance of ETHW on the forked ETHPoW chain. ETHW will be native only to the PoW fork and represent an entirely different asset than the original ETH on Ethereum.

So, how are the various major centralized exchanges supporting this PoW fork of Ethereum and the $ETHW token?

Earlier today, Crypto Briefing published a useful guide that provides this nice summary based on the announcements that have been made so far by these exchanges:

“Poloniex has already listed an ETHW placeholder token and will list and support trading for the ETHW fork when it launches, including crediting users’ accounts with ETHW at a 1:1 ratio with the amount of ETH they hold. Binance, MEXC Global, Gate.io, and FTX will all support an ETH PoW fork and also plan to credit users’ accounts with ETHW at a 1:1 ratio with ETH.

“OKX will list and support trading for an ETHW fork. BitMEX has launched ETHPOWZ22—a USDT-margined ETHPoW Linear Futures Contract. Coinbase and Kraken have said they will review an ETH PoW fork like any other asset and list it for trading if appropriate.“

Of course, if for whatever reason you cannot transfer your $ETH holdings to one of these exchanges before the Merge, you could move your $ETH to a non-custodial wallet, but this option is not not as easy or as as safe as letting an exchange such as FTX take care of things for you.

It is also worth pointing out that yesterday CoinGecko Co-Founder Bobby Ong posted an excellent Twitter thread on how to “best position yourself” to take advantage of the upcoming $ETHW airdrop:

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Featured Image via Pixabay