Binance says it is “closely watching” Ethereum’s planned PoS upgrade. The leading cryptocurrency exchange announced that it will evaluate any potential Ethereum fork tokens.
Binance may list Ethereum fork tokens
Binance’s statements come as some members of the crypto community are pushing to maintain the PoW version of Ethereum following the “merge”. The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange will support Ethereum’s landmark “merge” event and may go as far as listing some Ethereum fork tokens.
In a blog post on Wednesday, Binance said it is “watching closely” the merge update and will support it at launch. The exchange added that the event could potentially lead to the creation of some forked Ethereum tokens and will “assess support for the distribution and withdrawal of fork tokens.” In other words, Binance has hinted that it plans to support the Proof-of-Stake version of ETH as critical update ships. However, it did not decline to list other ETH-related forks.
What will Merge add to the Ethereum network?
Ethereum’s “merge” update is considered one of the biggest crypto events in recent years. Merge combines the consensus layer to PoS with Ethereum’s existing PoW layer. Thus, the network will be secured by shares rather than miners. The upgrade, which is currently in testing and will be delivered in mid-September, is expected to reduce Ethereum’s energy consumption by 99.9% and reduce ETH issuance by around 90% as the network will no longer have to pay miners to add new blocks.
PoW mining support
While the Ethereum community has widely supported the merge, there has been some backlash about its impact on miners. As a result, some key figures in the crypto community are supporting a plan to fork the Ethereum blockchain to protect a PoW network. If a fork occurs, it will likely lead to the creation of new ETH tokens. That’s why Binance says it will evaluate potential new coins.
Circle and Tether, the companies behind USDC and USDT stablecoins, announced yesterday that they will only support PoS Ethereum after the merger. However, for exchanges in the business of making related assets available for transactions, Proof-of-Work Ethereum plans offer a potentially lucrative opportunity. Justin Sun-backed Poloniex said earlier this week that it will support two potential hardfork tokens. But so far, none of the major exchanges have committed to listing the new tokens. Ethereum will complete its final merge testnet early on Thursday, and the date of the merge in mainet will be finalized sometime later.
