Can miners of Ethereum fork "Exodus" reach the "land of milk and honey"?

The choice lies with the Ethereum ecosystem, and once chosen, there is no room for maneuver.

Original title: "Ethereum fork is the "Exodus" of miners, so can we reach the "land flowing with milk and honey"? "

Written by: Beichen

The clock of Ethereum Merge is ticking. This is a major event for the entire crypto industry in 2022, marking the beginning of "Ethereum 2.0".

The Merge is the first phase of Ethereum 2.0, which will realize the transition from PoW consensus to PoS consensus. However, only after the completion of the following four phases, will the real "Ethereum 2.0" come - at that time, TPS will reach 100,000 (now only 30). According to the development progress of The Merge phase, which has been postponed from 2020 to 2022, the completion of the fifth phase, The Splurge, will be delayed by at least two to three years.

Therefore, The Merge does not have much impact on the current development of the crypto industry... but it is a matter of life and death for Ethereum miners - Ethereum no longer needs miners, so what should it do?

This story has just begun, and from the background to the beginning it is very similar to the Book of Exodus in the Old Testament.

The Book of Exodus tells the story of how Moses (the ancestor of the Jews) led the Hebrews to escape from Egypt. The Ethereum fork tells the story of how Bao Erye (a veteran of the classic cryptocurrency circle in the last bull market) led miners and cryptocurrency speculators to escape from Ethereum.

Moses was a member of the Egyptian royal family and a childhood friend of Ramses II, the most powerful pharaoh in Egyptian history.

When Bao Erye was active in Garage Coffee, Vitalik, who had just reached adulthood, came to Garage Coffee for roadshows several times, but no one listened. Later, Vitalik went to Shanghai and found Wanxiang.

One day, Moses suddenly discovered that he was a Hebrew, and he began to rescue the Israelites who were suffering from miserable slavery under the inspiration of God. He asked Pharaoh to let the Israelites return to Canaan (today's Israel).

One day, Bao Erye suddenly found himself as the spokesperson for miners. Inspired by the Web3 vision and conscience, he helped the miners and advocated that the miners return to the Ethereum POW chain, which is the forked chain, after the upgrade.

“I think there should be a fork and the computing power of these miners should be preserved. These people have invested a lot of capital, money, and time in the Ethereum ecosystem. They work very hard every day for their beliefs and their careers. I think it is unbearable to suddenly make them unemployed or bankrupt. Their computing power should continue to support the original chain of Ethereum, which is the existing POW chain of Ethereum.”

The two stories above are surprisingly similar from the background to the beginning, so what about the subsequent developments?

Pharaoh rejected Moses and doubled the enslavement of the Israelites. Finally, Egypt was punished with the "Ten Plagues", including bloody floods, frogs, lice, flies, livestock plagues, and the extermination of the firstborn. Finally, he agreed to release the people. Then Moses led hundreds of thousands of Hebrews on an immortal journey, crossing the Red Sea to escape Egypt and after a long journey back to the beautiful land of Canaan, where milk and honey flowed.

Can Bao Erye also deal a heavy blow to Ethereum and lead miners and cryptocurrency speculators back to the original Ethereum chain, which is full of milk and honey? This question needs to be discussed separately.

Ethereum's Pharaoh Vitalik said, "I don't think Ethereum will really be seriously hurt by another fork." He accused those who promoted the fork of being just a few outsiders involved in the exchange, and their followers just wanted to make money quickly.

What the Pharaoh of Ethereum says is not important; what is important is the basic foundation of Ethereum.

In 2016, the Ethereum community was split over whether to roll back a transaction that was damaged by a hacker attack. Vitalik's followers went to the new chain, and a small number of people stayed on the original chain, Ethereum Classic (ETC).

At that time, Ethereum was not an ecosystem, and ETC's followers were idealistic and ambitious developers, so ETC had a high chance of winning. However, time later proved how important community leaders were to early open source communities.

However, after the ecological explosion of DeFi Summer, Ethereum in 2022 is no longer the young boy it used to be. For the protocols on Ethereum, standing on the right side is crucial to future survival, and there is almost no possibility of fence-sitting.

The most direct is the centralized stablecoins such as USDC and USDT, which can only support one chain. Because the stablecoins issued must be exchanged for US dollars, they have no reason to support two chains and give themselves two liabilities, so the stablecoin on the other chain they do not support will return to zero, which will cause the entire economic system to collapse.

Of course, you can also optimistically estimate that the collapse of the economic system caused by the disappearance of stablecoins may be temporary, and a new order can be rebuilt later. So let's see what the project side will choose?

The project owner may have a reason to make more money on the two chains, but there is absolutely no reason for the project owner to dilute the tokens of his project by half. Therefore, the wise choice is to freeze the protocol on the abandoned chain, making the tokens non-transferable and non-redeemable, leaving only a few protocols operating in the ruins.

Therefore, there is no choice for Ethereum to fork this time, and you can only choose the chain that everyone will choose. If stablecoins, wallets, and those project owners all choose the forked chain, then Bao Erye will be the Pharaoh of Ethereum.

Finally, back to the Book of Exodus, the Israelites escaped from slavery in Egypt and built their home in the land flowing with milk and honey. If the Ethereum ecosystem does not choose a forked chain, then the miners and investors who follow the Ethereum fork may be the lost lambs.

The choice lies with the Ethereum ecosystem, and once chosen, there is no room for maneuver.