Crypto Mining Giant Says Ethereum’s Upcoming Merge Presents Risk of Censorship
Crypto mining pool AntPool is issuing a notice to its users as Ethereum’s (ETH) highly anticipated update dubbed The Merge approaches.
In a new blog post, AntPool says that it will not be supporting its users’ assets on the new proof-of-stake (PoS) Ethereum chain, citing censorship risk.
“As ETH2.0 (The Merge) comes along with the risk of censorship among different countries, ANTPOOL, for the sake of clients’ asset security, will not be able to maintain the user’s ETH assets on the PoS chain. ETH miners are encouraged to add an ETH wallet address in their current account by 2022/09/03 00:00 (UTC+0), to receive the accumulated ETH assets on ANTPOOL.
ANTPOOL will continue providing Ethash mining pool services for users who plan to keep mining Ethash tokens like ETC, and will make every effort to ensure hash power stability and asset security.”
The Merge allows Ethereum to move from a proof-of-work model to a proof-of-stake one, setting the stage for future upgrades that could increase the blockchain’s scalability.
After The Merge, Ethereum’s proof-of-work (PoW) miners will be replaced by staking providers, which will largely be big crypto exchanges that may be susceptible to regulation or censorship from authorities.
AntPool says it only wants to support decentralized PoW consensus models that they say fit the vision of pseudonymous Bitcoin (BTC) creator Satoshi Nakomoto.
“As one of the largest PoW mining pools in the world, ANTPOOL advocates decentralized PoW consensus by Satoshi Nakamoto, and fully supports BTC, ETC and other PoWs tokens. ANTPOOL has always devoted itself to the development and maintenance of the PoW ecosystem. It is committed to leading the blockchain industry using technology and to embracing a bright future with infinite possibilities.”
Aug 29, 2022
