Controversial Ethereum Fork Token ETHW Tanks 50% In IOU Market

ETHW — a token pertaining to a proposed hard fork of the Ethereum ETH/USD blockchain — has lost 53% of its value in seven days.

What Happened: EthereumPoW or ETHW began trading as an IOU token on several cryptocurrency exchanges last week. The token gained popularity after some market participants advocated for another fork of the Ethereum blockchain to maintain the Proof-of-Work consensus as the network transitions to Proof-of-Stake on Sept. 15.

ETHW was listed on Poloniex, Gate.io and MEXC’s IOU markets and quickly gained liquidity as a speculative bet against ETH PoS.

#ETHW liquidity and volume on @Poloniex is getting better. Now ETHS:ETHW=93:7. 7% premium. pic.twitter.com/hFWv3XhaXS

— H.E. Justin Sun (@justinsuntron) August 8, 2022

Reaching a high of $141.63 on Aug. 8, the token has lost 53% of its value over the last seven days. At press time, the IOU token was trading at $65.98, down 7.53% in the last 24 hours.

Historical EVM Timeline:

2015:#EthereumClassic – The Original #Ethereum Virtual Machine 

2016:  @ethereum Foundation – The Fork chain adjusting the ledger to return ERC20 $DAO tokens

2022:  $ETHW – A potential Fork of a Fork organized by a miner claiming authenticity https://t.co/IF4H0hnT3R pic.twitter.com/Est3JpT266

— Ethereum Classic DAO (@EthClassicDAO) August 5, 2022

ETHW has been dubbed a “cash grab” by ETH and Ethereum ClassicETC/USD proponents who are skeptical that the potential new chain will successfully capture any of ETH’s value following the Merge.

See Also: PROOF OF STAKE VS PROOF OF WORK

The project’s website says it has garnered support from large mining pools like Poolin, Flexpool.io and f2pool. If ETH miners do end up committing hashpower to mining the forked chain, the ETHW token and underlying chain could be brought into existence. 

Price Action: At press time, ETH was trading at $1,931, down 2.95% over 24 hours as per data from Benzinga Pro. ETC was trading at $41.23, down 6% over the same period