Ethereum Chain Split Possible After Merger, Investigates, But Will ETC Price Continue to Rise?

Ethereum Classic is a relatively smaller PoW chain compared to Ethereum in terms of usage and hash rate.

Market analysis

GPU-powered Ethereum proof-of-work (PoW) generated around $19 billion in revenue last year for ETH miners. But those revenue streams are in jeopardy, as Ethereum is set to become a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain via "The Merge" upgrade in September.

Miners could then revolt against the new upgrade by continuing to mine Ethereum's old PoW after the hard fork chain split.

A survey by crypto hedge fund Galois Capital recently found that 33.1% of respondents believed the merger would create two parallel blockchains: ETH1 (PoW) and ETH2 (PoS).

Question 1: What happens during the merge? If Choice 2 or 3, skip to Questions 2-5.

— Galois Capital (@Galois_Capital) July 27, 2022

Nevertheless, most respondents, 53.7%, expect the Ethereum blockchain to transition smoothly from PoW to PoS.

Is ETH1 PoW "illogical"?

But controversial hard forks are nothing new. In fact, the current Ethereum chain originated in 2016 following a controversial hard fork to reverse a $60 million exploit, resulting in the chain splitting with Ethereum and Ethereum Classic (ETC).

This is where Ethereum Classic's argument against ETH1 begins. Since Ethereum Classic is already a PoW chain, creating a similar chain, ETH1, won't have "much relevance", according to some editors.

Several other Reddit comments explaining why ETH1 will fail...