Original Author: Kyle
More than 72 hours have passed since the birth of the Ethereum fork network ETHW (EthereumPow). During this period, ETHW network turmoil continued. It first used the same chain ID as the SmartBCH test network, which caused network connection problems; then the security agency pointed out that ETHW suffered a replay attack and lost 200 ETHW tokens.
In the secondary trading market, the ETHW token generated by the original ETH 1:1 mapping went down all the way after a brief rise. As of September 19, the asset price fell to around $5, a drop of more than 80% from the high point on the day of listing. %.
The continued decline in asset prices reflects that currency holders are pessimistic about their development prospects, and ETHW, whose slogan is to protect the interests of PoW miners, is also being abandoned by miners.
According to 2miners data, on the day when the ETHW mainnet was launched, its total network computing power reached a maximum of 80.56 TH/s. By September 19, this value had dropped to 29.92TH/s, a drop of 62.8% from the peak value, accounting for only 3.89% of the total computing power of 769 TH/s before the merger of the Ethereum mainnet.
first level title
The price of ETHW went down all the way after listing
On September 15, Ethereum completed the merger and upgrade, and the consensus mechanism changed from PoW (Proof of Work) to PoS (Proof of Stake). In the past seven years, PoW miners have been responsible for the block packaging and verification of the Ethereum network, and have received generous block rewards and handling fee rewards. After the merger, Ethereum under the PoW mechanism officially withdrew from the stage of history, but the mining machines and computing power of the original miners did not disappear.
Under the banner of "defending the interests of miners", Guo Hongcai (Bao Erye), an early KOL in the domestic currency circle, and Sun Yuchen, the founder of Tron, as community leaders, opened the chapter of forking Ethereum. According to the plan, 24 hours after the completion of the merger of Ethereum, the main network of the forked network ETHW (EthereumPow), which continues to maintain the PoW consensus mechanism, will be officially deployed, and then the chain ID of ETHW will be switched. In order to reserve sufficient time, the ETHW main network will go online at a specified time after processing 2048 empty blocks.
But there was an episode during the launch of the ETHW mainnet.
On September 16, many users found that they still could not use ETHW's official public mainnet information to access its blockchain, and could not use encrypted wallets to connect to its network. Subsequently, SmartBCH, the BCH public chain expansion plan, pointed out that the network connection problem of ETHW may be due to the fact that it uses the same chain ID as the SmartBCH testnet.
This issue was subsequently fixed. The ETHW main network was launched accordingly, and some of the original miners of Ethereum switched their computing power to the ETHW network, and the computing power of the entire network reached a maximum of 80.56 TH/s.
At the same time, as a fork network of Ethereum, ETHW also distributes token airdrops to all ETH holders 1:1. At present, Ouyi OKX, FTX, Bitfinex and other trading platforms have launched the ETHW trading market.
According to the law of blockchain forks in the past, the price trend of the forked chain tokens after it goes online reflects to a certain extent the consensus basis behind it. On the OKX platform, ETHW opened at a price of $15, and rose to $27.99 after it went online. This value is far from the price of about $1,600 before the Ethereum fork. In contrast, ETH maintained its previous price for some time after the merger.
After a brief surge, the price of ETHW quickly fell, and the closing price fell to $12.08 on the day, down 56.8% from the highest point. In the next few days, ETHW continued its downward trend. On September 19, ETHW fell to a minimum of $3.88, and then rebounded to around $5.15, a drop of 81.6% compared to the high point on the day of listing.
first level title
Sharp drop in hash rate shows miners are leaving
The market sell-off of ETHW reflects that users are not optimistic about the prospects of this forked network, especially on September 18, a security alert aggravated concerns about its security.
According to the monitoring of the security agency BlockSec, some attackers have implemented replay attacks on the ETHW chain. Replay attacks usually occur after the blockchain network is forked. Since the addresses and private keys on the two chains are the same, and the transaction format is exactly the same, transactions on one chain are also completely "legal" on the other chain. "of. Transactions initiated on one chain will also be confirmed if replayed on another chain.
During the preparation period for the fork, the ETHW team implemented replay protection at the code level, requiring all transactions to be signed with the chain ID. Still, someone found a loophole. According to analysis, the attacker first transferred 200 WETH to the ETH network through the Omni cross-chain bridge of the Gnosis chain, and then replayed the same message on the PoW chain to obtain an additional 200 ETHW.
This attack made users question the technical capabilities and security of ETHW. Subsequently, the ETHW official statement stated that it had tried to contact Omni Bridge and informed the bridge that it needed to correctly verify the actual chain ID of the cross-chain message. ETHW emphasized, "This is not a chain-level transaction replay, but a call data replay due to a flaw in a specific contract."
Whether it is the use of the same Chain ID as the SmartBCH testnet during the launch of the mainnet, or the occurrence of replay attacks, the ETHW after the fork is not reliable enough. If these problems are considered minor technical problems and can be resolved quickly, then the collapse of people's hearts will be a blow to ETHW.
After the launch of the ETHW mainnet, many mining pools including F2Pool, Poolin and BTC.com announced their support for ETHW mining. The ETHW community also cooperated to launch a backup mining pool, Ethwmine, which is committed to providing long-term mining pool services for ETHW .
These mining pools serving miners hope to continue to earn revenue from miners who transfer to ETHW. However, the computing power of the ETHW network was rapidly lost in just a few days.
According to the data of 2miners on September 19, the computing power of ETHW is 29.92TH/s, which is 62.8% lower than the peak value of 80.56 TH/s after the mainnet launch. According to the assumption before the fork, ETHW will have the opportunity to undertake most of the computing power of the original Ethereum network, but its current computing power level only accounts for 3.89% of the total computing power of 769 TH/s before the merger of the Ethereum mainnet.
In contrast, ETC, RVN, ERGO and other networks using the same mining algorithm have seen a significant increase in computing power, especially ETC has increased from 50 TH/s before the merger to more than 200 TH/s, which shows that ETHW is not the original Ethereum The only choice for miners.
As the price of ETHW continues to fall, more and more miners find that this forked chain is unprofitable, and it is not surprising that the computing power has dropped sharply. In the context of the already weak consensus foundation, the group of miners that ETHW relies on the most has gradually left, casting a haze on the future of this forked chain.
According to the consensus of the encryption industry, the value of the new generation of public chain depends on the construction of the ecology on the chain. The more prosperous the ecology on the chain, the more active the activities on the chain, the more recognized the value of the public chain. Before the merger of ETH, Uniswap, OpenSea, USDT issuer Tether, USDC issuer Circle and other mainstream DeFi applications and stablecoin issuers stated that they would not support any forked chains, which directly caused ETHW to fail to inherit the mainstream of the original Ethereum. On-chain applications. In other words, the current ecology on the ETHW chain is very weak.
According to the data of Okey Cloud Chain, the number of active addresses on the ETHW chain on September 19 was only 27,100, a decrease of 226,400 from the previous day, which shows that the enthusiasm of users on the chain to participate in ETHW has dropped significantly. In contrast, the number of active addresses on the ETH network during the same period was 487,700, and the number of active addresses on the BNB Chain was 1,426,800.
When the market value of tokens plummets, miners and users leave, and the ecological construction on the chain almost needs to start from scratch, the beginning of ETHW is eclipsed. How to gain a foothold among the new husband chains will become its biggest challenge.
