Ethereum Proof-of-Work Fork Timing Posted

Ethereum's proof-of-work fork will occur 24 hours following the Merge, according to a thread posted Monday on the @EthereumPoW Twitter feed.

The thread did not specify a precise time, saying this information would "be announced 1 hour before launch with a countdown timer." The Merge is expected to take place on Thursday.

"...Everything including final code, binaries, config files, nodes info, RPC, explorer, etc. will be made public when the time’s up," the thread said.

The ETHW mainnet will begin at "the block height of the Merge block 'plus' 2048 empty blocks" to ensure that the chainID converts to 10001 and that "the chain is the longest ... of ETHW.

Merge block +2049 will be the first to note any transactions on ETHW. "Block rewards for the empty blocks will be directed to the 1559 multi-sig wallet," the thread said.

The Merge is a technological overhaul of the Ethereum blockchain that will shift its protocol from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. Merge advocates say the change will make the blockchain faster and more energy efficient.

Some of Ethereum’s miners – those who run computers to process and validate transactions on the current proof-of-work (PoW) network – plan to keep the old network up and running.

The forked network will look and feel like Ethereum, but it will only be a skeleton of the real thing, with apps and tokens floating around without usage or value.

Justin Sun is a cheerleader for the EthereumPOW token (ETHW), but questions remain about how much traction it can possibly get when it's up against the already established Ethereum Classic blockchain, which maintains PoW. Market cap and trade volumes will have the answer to this question in a few weeks.

Read more: Who Will Mine Ethereum After It’s Gone?