Are We On Course For Another ETH Fork?

Hey JessEth

The world of blockchain is a bizarre hybrid, on the one hand it's technology-driven, and it's all about moving fast and breaking things and on the other hand it's also finance which is notorious for moving slowly. As we can see with Bitcoin the slowest money seems to be the most sound; those wanting speed have tried to engineer it with forks such as BCH and BSV.

Others have said no, Bitcoin should stay as is and do what it does best, as we build alongside it with the help of second layer protocols such as the lightning network.

Ethereum is a sandbox for ideas

While BTC, is slow in relative terms, ETH the second biggest cryptocurrency ecosystem has been moving at a rapid pace; it started out as a smart contract platform, then an ICO platform, then a Dapp platform and now a DE-FI platform and I'm sure will continue to be a breeding ground for new ideas.

It offers users the safety of proof of work with the versatility of smart contracts and tokenisation which has been replicated on various chains since ETH's launch.

Pressure from the competition

As Ethereum feels the pressure from other dapp chains like EOS, Cardano and the like, they know that proof of work will offer considerable drawbacks and many in the community want to move to proof of stake which can give them more scalability but also sacrifice security.

This is a contentious decision, and with ETH already having such a massive community, dapps on board and miners supporting the network, the decision will affect a lot more than those coding the new fork.

Transition

ETH 2.0 is reaching its final stages, and the test net phase is ongoing, there will be a phased approach with both proofs of work and proof of stake running at the same time. ETH holders on the new fork will be able to stake ETH if they have 32 or more tokens and could make for an attractive investment bringing more capital into ETH.

A transition in the protocol of this magnitude and scale has never been done before, and it's' going to be watched on by the crypto community to see if one can make such significant changes in consensus and governance of a chain. As I said, ETH has never been shy of changing, moving fast and breaking things.

The big break up

Now that I've caught you up on the history and what is at stake I think this is far too big a decision and far too many resources in the proof of work chain for everyone to want to move over.

What I think will happen is the miners will choose to run the original ETH, dapps that want POW will remain on ETH 1.0 and others will transition to 2.0 for staking.

Who knows what we will call it, ETHS and ETHW? I'm not a fan of this type of forking since I feel it dilutes the product, ads more confusion to the ecosystem, especially for new investors.

We all know how many people have brought BCH and BSC thinking they got the real BTC on the cheap. Some will want to stake and buy the wrong ETH.

Proof of atomic swaps

What I am hoping for is if the community decides to fork, that they agree on a bridge with atomic swaps where ETH can flow between the chains as needed. I'd also like to see dapps leverage both chains; some may want to use the staking layer for data transfers while the mining layer for securing transitions.

I think a hybrid approach for dapps could be a brilliant approach and give them even more tools to work with, also if it is more complexity on the back end.

For ETH holders like me, I don't mind, just means free money in my pocket if they do choose to fork.

Have your say

What do you good people of HIVE think? Will ETH fork once again?

So have at it my Jessies! If you don't have something to comment, comment "I am a Jessie."

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