The entire crypto market has been anticipating Ethereum’s shift from Proof-of-Work [PoW] to Proof-of-Stake [PoS] through ‘The Merge‘. This transition is expected to revamp the entire ETH ecosystem and bring about more faster and efficient transactions. While most of the network is looking forward to this big change, a multitude of people remain hesitant about this shift. This list largely included Ethereum miners.
Miners play a vital role in the current PoW scenario. These miners compete for rewards depending on the computational power that they amass. PoS, however, eliminates the presence of miners as the algorithm randomly picks validators in accordance with the ETH that has been staked. Instead of mining, PoS validators would simply create new blocks when selected. Therefore, the involvement of Ethereum miners here is next to zero.
The mining industry has grown with the crypto market and has become the livelihood of several individuals. With ‘The Merge’ scheduled to take place in August, an array of Ethereum miners came forward to address how the transition would be catastrophic for them.
A Ukrainian translator who mines crypto on his balcony revealed that he buys clothing as well as other necessities through the income earned via mining. Speaking about the potential changes that would occur, he said,
“This will be a huge financial hit and almost a complete loss of a good source of income.”
While the ongoing bear market has already caused immense loss to many, the elimination of certain miners’ major sources of income could certainly be disruptive.
These Ethereum miners are yearning for a delay in ‘The Merge’
The Merge has witnessed several delays over the last couple of years. Switching up the entire system of the second largest network in the crypto market is more difficult than expected. As a result, Ethereum miners are hoping for another delay.
An industrial Ethereum miner, Hive has been in the market for a while now. The CEO of the firm, Aydin Kilic believed that the network would not be able to pull it off this time either.
However, Tim Beiko, a member of the Ethereum Foundation assured us that the transition would most likely occur, and the chances of it not happening were 1 to 10 percent. He said,
“The odds of it not happening this year are very low. The thing I want to avoid is someone buying a mining GPU today and the Merge happens this summer.”
Several others, however, are adamant about mining till the very end, still dubious about the future.
In addition to this, Flexpool, a Canadian mining pool operator was looking at the positive side. An executive compared the whole fiasco to the typewriter and stated,
“It’s like a typewriter company. No one is buying typewriters anymore, so you have to shift into other businesses using the capital you made in typewriters.”
While unrest remains in the Ethereum mining market, the altcoin was on the verge of dipping down below $1K. At press time, ETH was trading for $1,104 with a 6.43 percent daily drop.