The Ethereum blockchain integration is expected to take place on September 15 at 05:05 UTC. It is an important milestone that marks the complete transition to Ethereum’s proof-of-stake (PoS) and eliminates the need for energy-intensive mining. Compared to Proof of Work (PoW), 99.9% is planned.
Some miners are preparing for a hard fork that will allow them to continue using the PoW consensus. Forked coins have proven profitable in the past. When Ethereum (ETH) launched in 2016, it came with a counterpart, Ethereum Classic (ETC).
When a new hard fork occurs where the Ethereum blockchain is split into two separate networks, users holding ETH on the chain will have an equal balance of ETHW on the forked chain. This will be an additional sign; A completely different asset from ETH.
For ETH holders using hard wallets, the question is more straightforward: what happens to your tokens if the fork follows the merger? We’ve rounded up some answers to this question, so you don’t get lost or caught in a scam in the coming hours.
In fact, most hard wallet providers are taking the same approach: monitor adoption in the new chain and fork chain before adding any support for ETHPoW. Also, they warn that users are not required to take any action during the update.
Charles Guillemette, CTO of security hard wallet Ledger, explained to Cointelegraph, “When a fork occurs, the first thing everyone needs to know is whether any asset the user currently has on the main network is safe,” the company added. Day 1 ETH verification does not support a working fork as there are several technical aspects that need to be assessed to ensure that it is safe for users, the most important of which is ensuring that the new chain is secure.
Similarly, Joseph Tetek, a Bitcoin analyst at Trezor, said, “Trezor Suite does not support interaction with pre-merger verification of working coins after the merge, but users can still use Trezor as a third-party interface to MetaMask. An older version of the blockchain.”
Swiss wallet provider Tang also has no plans to support the PoW fork. “Until it is confirmed how serious the supporters of this hard fork are, we are not ready to support the project to our customers,” said CTO, Andrey Lazutkin.
ETH holders who use non-custodial wallets and control their own private keys will have instant access to both sets of coins (ETHW and ETH). Private key holders can collect fork coins using Metamask to connect the PoW network to Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) wallets.
Crypto wallet companies warn users to take extra precautions during and after network upgrades. “Scammers are especially active during major network upgrades. Do not contact anyone who says you need to take urgent measures to protect your coins,” Tetek warned.