The Ethereum community has been in anticipation of the Merge for quite some time now. However, with this network-wide upgrade, the community could be witnessing yet another development. This did not seem to settle well with the majority of the crypto community. The fate of the ETH miner-led hard fork is uncertain, yet an array of platforms have been showering support.
iFinex, the parent company of prominent crypto platform, Bitfinex was the latest to do so. In a recent blog post, the platform noted that it had rolled out Ethereum [ETH] Chain Split Tokens [CSTs]. With this, users will be able to trade the hard-forked assets in case of a split of the chain.
Bitfinex isn’t the first platform to extend support to the aforementioned assets of the Ethereum network. Justin Sun’s Poloniex, BitMEX, MEXC, and a few others were among those who seemed to be prepping for the hard fork.
Elaborating on its latest move, Bitfinex noted that it had “identified three potential scenarios and therefore the ETHW and ETHS tokens are designed to give users the ability to help prepare” for those outcomes.
The first one was if there would be no consensus change on the current Ethereum chain [PoW]. During this, ETHS would become worthless and expire. In addition to this, ETH would be given in exchange for ETHW holding. The token would expire on 31st December 2022.
Highlighting the other two scenarios, the exchange wrote,
“In the event of a successful consensus change for Ethereum (Ethereum Proof of Stake chain) with no fork, ETHW will expire worthless and ETH will be given in exchange for each ETHS holding.
In the event of a successful fork and a successful consensus change for Ethereum, users will be credited with their respective ETHW and ETHS tokens.”
Here’s how to create CSTs
As per Bitfinex, users would have to formulate CSTs by employing the Token Manager. This option will be found in the Order Form menu in the sidebar order ticket. Following the creation of the CST, ETH will be debited from the account of the user. Soon after an equivalent amount of ETHW or ETHS will be credited.
Furthermore, users will be given the chance to reserve the process and garner their ETH instead.
Ethereum and its ever-surging development activity
The Merge is set to take place in mid-September. With just weeks left for the big transition, developers are busier than ever. Meanwhile, the developmental activity of the network in the last month was noteworthy.
As seen in the chart, Ethereum emerged as the top project by development activity over the last 30 days. Polkadot [DOT] and Cardano [ADA] were also part of the list.