ETHW\u2019s ecosystem rallied this past month but remains down more than 90% from its record highs<\/p>\n
The core development team behind EthereumPoW, the roughly one-year-old Proof of Work fork of Ethereum, is disbanding to transition the project to community governance.<\/p>\n
On Dec. 19, EthereumPoW published<\/a> its first blog since March, announcing plans to dissolve its core team. The announcement said the EthereumPoW network has reached a point of maturation where decentralized governance can support its ongoing operation independent of a core team.<\/p>\n \u201cFollowing in-depth discussions and based on a majority consensus, we have reached a unanimous decision: the conditions for dissolving the core development organization have matured,\u201d the team said.<\/p>\n OneDao, a Harmony-based protocol, will take control over EthereumPoW\u2019s servers as a transitional step. \u201cThe existing servers will be temporarily transferred to OneDao for transitional maintenance until long-term ecological partners are identified,\u201d the announcement added.<\/p>\n The news follows funding issues experienced by the EthereumPoW core team. On Nov. 30, the core team requested<\/a> $200,000 to support its operations through 2024, stating the funds would be earmarked to maintain the project\u2019s servers and recruit additional part-time engineers.<\/p>\n The core team\u2019s wallet held<\/a> just 10.75 ETHW ($29.58) at the time. The wallet now holds 11.5 ETHW worth $30.5.<\/p>\n EthereumPoW emerged as a minority fork following Ethereum\u2019s Shanghai upgrade \u2014 also known as The Merge<\/a> \u2014 last September. The Merge transitioned Ethereum to Proof of Stake consensus, also booting its sizable ecosystem of Proof of Work miners from the network.<\/p>\n With $5B worth of mining hardware set to be displaced, some miners banded together<\/a> to rally support for a Proof of Work fork. While some centralized exchanges pledged<\/a> to support the forked chain\u2019s token, analysts tipped that the entire EthereumPoW DeFi and dApp ecosystem would immediately collapse following The Merge.<\/p>\n EthereumPoW experienced a fraught launch<\/a>, with its token crashing 75% in 24 hours and users claiming the network was inaccessible. Further, miners were earning just 10% of their former revenue by validating the chain.<\/p>\n While many miners looked to other Proof of Work networks<\/a> supporting their hardware such as Ethereum Classic, Ravencoin, and Ergo, the massive influx of displaced hashrate nuked the profitability of validating said networks. Two weeks later, more than 80% of Ethereum\u2019s former hashing power had gone offline.<\/p>\nEthereumPoW\u2019s post-launch decline<\/h2>\n