Hassan Maishera
The Ethereum Merge is coming soon, and Binance has already declared its support for the event.
The Ethereum Merge will see the Ethereum blockchain finally migrate to a proof of stake mechanism. However, there are some proponents within the Ethereum ecosystem that do not fancy this move. Hence, there are talks to fork the Ethereum blockchain right before the Merge to allow them to continue using the proof of work mechanism.
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, announced in a blog post on Wednesday, August 10th, that it would support the Ethereum Merge. The exchange added that it might be open to supporting the Ethereum proof of work fork.
The cryptocurrency exchange said;
“Binance is closely monitoring the development of “The Merge” scheduled to take place in Q3/Q4 2022 on the Ethereum network, which could potentially result in new forked tokens.
- Binance will support “The Merge.”
- In the case of new forked tokens, Binance will evaluate the support for the distribution and withdrawal of the forked tokens.
Please note: In order to protect Binance users, all forked tokens will go through the same strict listing review process as Binance does for any other coin/token. Binance does not guarantee any listings as per our internal policy.”
In September, the Ethereum network will finally upgrade to ETH 2.0 and would use the proof of stake mechanism instead of the proof of work. Hence, eliminating miners from the Ethereum ecosystem.
According to the official Ethereum document, the Merge represents the joining of the existing execution layer of Ethereum with its new proof-of-stake consensus layer, the Beacon Chain.
The Merge eliminates the need for energy-intensive mining and instead secures the network using staked ETH. A truly exciting step in realizing the Ethereum vision – more scalability, security, and sustainability.
The team further explained that the Merge represents the official switch to using the Beacon Chain as the engine of block production. Mining will no longer be the means of producing valid blocks. Instead, the proof-of-stake validators assume this role and will be responsible for processing the validity of all transactions and proposing blocks.
However, Ethereum users should know that no history will be lost. As Mainnet gets merged with the Beacon Chain, it will also merge the entire transactional history of Ethereum. Hence, user funds would be safe.
Miners on the network would move to other blockchains, with some reportedly migrating to the Ethereum Classic blockchain. However, some miners might stay on the forked Ethereum blockchain as it would be using a proof of work mechanism.
Binance’s possible support of the Ethereum proof of work fork shows the inclusive nature of the cryptocurrency exchange. Combined with the positive Binance reviews, the cryptocurrency exchange continues to maintain its position as the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchange.
