Ethereum's blockchain Merge is expected to take place around 05:05 UTC on Sept. 15. It is a milestone that marks a full transition towards Proof-of-Stake (PoS) for Ethereum, and eliminates the need for energy-intensive mining by a projected 99.9% when compared to Proof of Work (PoW).
Some miners are also getting ready for a hard fork that would allow them to continue using PoW consensus. Forked coins have proven to be lucrative in the past. The holders of Ethereum (ETH), for example, came to possess an equivalent amount of Ethereum Classic (ETC) when it forked in 2016.
In the event of a new hard fork, in which the Ethereum blockchain would split into two different networks, users holding ETH on-chain would have equal balance of ETHW on the forked chain. This would be an additional token; a totally different asset from ETH.
For ETH holders using hard wallets, the question is more straightforward: what would happen to your tokens if a fork followed the merge? We have wrapped up some answers to this question, so you don't get lost or trapped in a scam in the coming hours.
In fact, most of the hard wallets providers are taking the same approach: monitor adoption in the new chain as well as the forked chain before adding any support for ETHPoW. Also, they alert that there is no need for users to take any action during the upgrade.
Charles Guillemet, CTO of security hard wallet Ledger, explained to Cointelegraph that, "in the event of a fork, the first thing everyone should know is that any assets the user currently has on the main network are safe," adding that the company "will not support an ETH Proof of Work fork on day 1, as there are a number of technical aspects that need to be evaluated to ensure it's safe for users, chief
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