What is EthereumPoW (ETHW)?

Deep Dive

1. Purpose & Value Proposition

EthereumPoW was created in direct response to Ethereum's "Merge" upgrade in September 2022, which transitioned the network from a proof-of-work (PoW) to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. A hard fork is a radical change to a network's protocol that creates a permanent divergence from the previous version. The ETHW fork was executed by a community that believed in preserving the original, miner-secured Ethereum. Its core value proposition is to maintain a version of Ethereum that continues to operate on the energy-intensive PoW model, catering to miners and users who are ideologically or economically committed to that system.

2. Technology & Architecture

Technically, ETHW is a separate, independent public blockchain that started from a snapshot of the Ethereum mainnet at block height 15,537,393 (the Merge block). It made minimal changes to the codebase to ensure chain sustainability under PoW, such as disabling the difficulty bomb (a mechanism that intentionally makes mining harder) and directing transaction fee rewards to miners. It is not an ERC-20 token on Ethereum; ETHW is the native currency of its own chain, requiring users to connect their wallets (like MetaMask) to a custom RPC network to access it.

Conclusion

EthereumPoW is fundamentally a blockchain fork that serves as a living archive and alternative for the pre-Merge Ethereum ecosystem, sustained by a community dedicated to the proof-of-work consensus model. How will its utility and developer activity evolve as it operates independently from Ethereum's core development roadmap?