Analyzing Activity on ETHPoW

The Ethereum Merge took place in the early hours of September 15, 2022, which consisted of a move from a proof-of-work (POW) consensus to proof-of-stake (POS). However, a subset of the Ethereum community did not agree with this decision as they continued to produce blocks using POW, which resulted in a fork of the Ethereum network (ETHPoW). In this piece, we explore some interesting metrics from the ETHPoW network. All data used was collected between block 15537394 (Merge block) mined on Thursday, September 15, 2022, 06:42:42 and block 15565326 mined on Monday, September 19, 2022, 11:12:05 unless stated otherwise.

ETHW is available to trade on several exchanges, including FTX and BitMEX. Its value is mainly derived from the demand of individuals that want to participate in the ETHPoW network (network fees are denominated in ETHW) in addition to speculators of the fork chain’s potential growth. It should be noted that the accessible supply of ETHW is less than the accessible supply of ETHPoS due to the fact that almost 11.5% of circulating ETH is staked and there is no mechanism to redeem this ether in the current implementation of ETHPoW clients. However, this can be implemented by upgrading ETHPoW clients with a hard fork in the future. If this were to occur, it's reasonable to expect downwards price pressure on ETHW as more tokens enter circulation.