Chainlink drops Ethereum PoW forks for PoS after merger

Chainlink protocol will continue operations on Ethereum after next merger with Proof-of-Stake consensus layer.

Chainlink aligns with the decision of the Ethereum Foundation and its community. Therefore, forked versions of the Ethereum blockchain, which include proof-of-work (PoW) forks, will no longer be supported by the Chainlink protocol after the merger.

In an official announcement, the Chainlink protocol revealed that its services will remain on the Ethereum blockchain after the long-awaited merger. The Ethereum blockchain is anticipating the merger in September 2022, which will merge its mainnet with the Beacon Chain.

This will switch all Ethereum operations from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake (PoS).

The merger was pushed back from mid-2021 to September 2022 previously. If it goes according to the developers' schedule, Phase 1 will kick off the transition of ecosystem transaction history and smart contracts to the PoS network.

This transition will affect all smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain, which in Q1 2022 totaled 1.45 million. Chainlink's role in providing hybrid smart contract services is no exception.

Therefore, in the latest announcement, Chainlink urged its users to prepare their smart contract operations accordingly to avoid future incidents during and after PoS implementation.

Related: Ethereum Merger: How will the PoS transition impact the ETH ecosystem?

The Ethereum merger is a major milestone in the crypto industry. The transition from PoW to PoS has been a key topic of discussion in the community as a solution towards sustainability, scalability and improved decentralization.

According to the official Ethereum website, the power consumption of the network will be reduced by around 99.5% once it runs on PoS. Previously, the total energy consumption of Ethereum was compared to that of the whole country of the Netherlands,