As the merger and upgrade of Ethereum is approaching, the topic of "where will Ethereum miners go after the upgrade" has been widely discussed again in the encryption circle. Recently, the veteran encryption player Guo Hongcai (Chandler Guo) who lives in the United States has established an Ethereum fork discussion group. Promoting ETH-PoW on Twitter Space ignited the heat on ETH fork.
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Migration of miners to other PoW networks can carry a small amount
Among the schemes of Ethereum miners migrating to other PoW networks, the market is currently the most popular for the Ethereum Classic network. Under this positive expectation, ETC tokens ushered in an increase of about 170% in the past month, while ETH’s An increase of about 52%. In addition, as of July 28, according to the data from the 2Miners website, the total network computing power of the Ethereum Classic network has increased by about 19% in the past month, and the total network computing power of Ethereum has increased by about 9.3% during the same period.
Judging from the token price and the growth of the entire network computing power, the market seems to be more optimistic that the Ethereum Classic network will undertake the computing power and ecology after the merger of Ethereum, and the AntPool under Bitmain also stated that it has invested 10 million US dollars To support the development of the ETC ecosystem, and plan to invest more funds to strengthen the ecological construction.
However, at present, the total network computing power of the Ethereum Classic network is about 25TH/s, while the total network computing power of Ethereum is about 935 TH/s, a difference of nearly 37 times. After the large-scale migration of Ethereum miners to the Ethereum Classic network, it will inevitably lead to The surge in network computing power has greatly increased the difficulty of mining. In addition, the current price difference between ETH and ETC is about 42 times, and the mining income of miners after migrating to the Ethereum Classic network will also face a sharp decline.
At the same time, the ecological development of the Ethereum classic network is limited. According to DefiLlama data, as of July 28, there are only three DeFi projects in its ecology, namely HebeSwap, ETCSwap and Swap Cat. Even under the stimulation of multiple benefits, the current ecological scale It is also difficult to support the long-term maintenance of a high market value of ETC tokens. Under the influence of the above factors, the cost of mining may exceed the income at that time, causing some miners to choose to leave.
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If you want to fork, getting the ecology is a difficult problem
Since it is difficult for other PoW networks to carry the full computing power of Ethereum miners, it is likely to result in unequal costs and benefits after migration. Next, let’s take a look at the more discussed Ethereum fork scheme. In the long history of the encryption industry, we are no strangers to the fork of the blockchain network. There are various reasons for the fork, which may be technical reasons, value differences, etc., such as the famous BTC and BCH fork, Ethereum And the Ethereum Classic fork, etc.
Compared with the above-mentioned forks, the forks after the merger and upgrade of Ethereum face more challenges. For example, BTC is mainly used in the field of transfer payment, so its forks only need to be supported by miners. battle of strength". As the king of the smart contract public chain, the current Ethereum ecosystem has formed a certain scale, and its fork will involve tens of thousands of Dapps and agreements, as well as tens of billions of dollars of basic assets on the chain, so this fork will be the entire The ecological choice is far more complex than any previous fork.
To put it simply, for example, after the upgrade of Ethereum, a blockchain ETH-PoW with a PoW mechanism is forked, then Dapps and protocols in the Ethereum ecosystem need to make choices, and different Dapps and protocols are interrelated and Nesting, for example, NFT projects such as Boring Ape require NFT trading platforms, and DeFi protocols require oracles, etc., so the former must follow the latter. At the same time, DeFi has become the infrastructure of the entire Web3 world, and it also occupies half of the entire ecology. Most of the activities on the chain will eventually rely on DeFi protocols such as transactions and loans. Therefore, the choice of DeFi protocols will also have a major impact on applications in other fields. .
As we all know, DeFi applications are highly combinable and interdependent, and it is difficult to separate them. For example, users often mortgage assets such as BTC and ETH on lending agreements such as Aave, and lend stablecoins USDC and USDT, etc., and then borrow The stablecoin that is released can be pledged to Curve to provide liquidity, or to purchase other token assets through Uniswap, etc. The close correlation between applications will lead to the convergence of choices. Assuming that Aave and Uniswap choose the upgraded PoS chain of Ethereum, based on considerations of protocol security, user stickiness, and asset size, Curve will also make the same choice. The choice of the top DeFi protocol will most likely become the vane of other protocols.
For the DeFi protocol, the most important thing is the basic assets such as USDC and USDT, so the choice of the protocol will be based on which side the asset side chooses. We know that these assets are backed by actual collateral, and their intrinsic value will not change fundamentally with the issuance of a forked token on the forked chain. Take USDC with a current market value of nearly 54 billion US dollars as an example, its circulation will not double due to the emergence of the ETH-PoW chain, because the US dollar reserves behind it have not changed, and its total value is still 54 billion US dollars, so if the issuer Circle still If you choose the upgraded Ethereum chain, the "USDC fork currency" on the ETH-PoW chain will not be recognized because there is no reserve support.
And if Circle decides to allocate USDC to two chains, then what proportion to allocate is also a question worth considering, and the "pricing" after allocation also needs to be considered, such as whether USDC on each chain corresponds to 1 US dollar, or two The total value of USDC on the chain is $1. In addition, if the Ethereum miners fork, then how to coordinate the huge group of miners to choose the same fork chain, will it cause the miners to set up their own businesses and form a situation of "separate forces" of multiple fork chains, then Circle The choice may be more difficult.
In addition to USDC, there is also USDT on Ethereum. If the two choose the same chain, then the choice of DeFi protocol is relatively simple. How to choose the agreement party will be more complicated.
From a commercial point of view, the choice of asset parties such as USDC and USDT is bound to be for their own development, which is conducive to expanding asset circulation, and what has a major impact on circulation is "user demand". If user demand increases, there will be more users. If you are willing to exchange your dollars for the asset, then its circulation will also increase. Thanks to the development of DeFi, GameFi, NFT and other fields, the market value of USDC has increased by about 45 times in the past two years, so ecological prosperity can promote growth. Only when the ecological scale is getting larger and the demand is increasing, Circle can issue more USDC , to earn more income. Therefore, whether it is USDC or USDT, their choice is based on whether the ecology of the future blockchain network can continue to develop to expand its own scale.
summary
summary
Whether migrating to other PoW networks or forking Ethereum, there will be many problems. Migrating to other PoW networks will lead to a surge in computing power and unequal costs and benefits. Without the support of the Ethereum core developer community such as Vitalik, the fork of Ethereum has a worrisome prospect, and it is difficult to obtain asset parties, agreements and applications, and users of all ages. Existing Ethereum mining has formed a huge industrial chain. After the upgrade of Ethereum to the PoS consensus, it is also worth looking forward to whether there will be new solutions.
