The world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, has announced that it is “closely monitoring” Ethereum’s scheduled Proof-of-Stake upgrade and would consider the support for potential Ethereum fork tokens. The update follows some of the crypto community members’ push to preserve a Proof-of-Work version of Ethereum after “the Merge.”
Binance, in a Wednesday blog post, said it is keeping an eye on the “Merge” and would support it on launch. The crypto exchange stated that the upgrade event may result in the creation of some forked Ethereum tokens and will evaluate the support for distribution and withdrawal of the forked tokens.
The supposed Ethereum "Merge" update is widely regarded as one of the most significant crypto events in recent years. The world's leading smart contract blockchain will "merge" its current Proof-of-Work execution layer with a Proof-of-Stake consensus layer, transitioning the network to a new consensus mechanism that relies on validators rather than miners.
The upgrade, which is currently in testing stages and scheduled to be released in mid-September, is expected to reduce Ethereum's energy consumption by 99.9%. It will also reduce ETH issuance by approximately 90%, as the network will no longer have to pay miners to add new blocks to the chain.
While the Ethereum community has actively supported the Merge, some concern has been raised about its impact on miners. As a result, some prominent crypto community members, including TRON founder Justin Sun and established miner Chandler Gou, have backed a plan to fork the Ethereum blockchain to preserve a Proof-of-Work network.
If a fork occurs, it will almost certainly result in the creation of new ETH tokens, which is why Binance has stated that it will evaluate any potential new coins.
Ethereum is set to complete its final Merge testnet early Thursday, with the date for the Merge on mainnet to be decided later.
