Coinbase Reveals It Will “Review All ETH Forked Tokens After The Merger” – Exchange Bitcoin News

by James · August 28, 2022

Publicly traded firm Coinbase Global has revealed that the company plans to evaluate potential forks arising from the upcoming Ethereum upgrade known as The Merge. In a recently updated blog post, Coinbase said that if a new Ethereum proof-of-work (PoW) token is created, it “will be reviewed with the same rigor as any other asset listed” on the company’s exchange.

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Coinbase updates the public on the possibility of an Ethereum fork occurring after the merger

The merger is coming soon, and data shows it’s about 16 days away now. Essentially, The Merge is Ethereum’s plan to transition from a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm to a new proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus scheme. Despite the fact that a PoW network similar to ETH already exists in Ethereum Classic (ETC), there has been talk of creating a new PoW fork once The Merge is implemented.

The proposed ETH PoW fork has gained market traction as a number of crypto exchanges have created IOU token versions called ETHW. At the time of writing, ETHW is changing hands at $49 per unit, and is up close to 5% in the last 24 hours. This past week on August 25th, Coinbase Global (Nasdaq: COIN) updated a blog post that was originally published on August 16th. The latest update concerns the possibility of an ETH PoW fork arising from The Merge.

The intentions of the blog post explained how Coinbase plans to stop any Ethereum or ERC20 based transactions in the middle of The Merge. The recent update states: “Should an ETH PoW fork occur after The Merge, this asset will be assessed with the same rigor as any other asset listed on our exchange.” Coinbase too tweeted about the update on Twitter the same day.

“At Coinbase, our goal is to list all assets that are legal and safe to list,” the exchange tweeted. “We will evaluate any ETH forked tokens after The Merge on a case-by-case basis in accordance with our standard asset listing policy. You can rest assured that all potential forked tokens of Ethereum, including PoW forks, will go through the same rigorous the listing review process that is done for all other assets listed on our exchange,” Coinbase added.

It is well known that exchanges can and will take as long as they want to spread forked assets, and some trading platforms have never offered support for specific crypto forks. Coinbase made similar decisions during the Ethereum Classic and Bitcoin Cash forks. It is also well known by experienced crypto participants that holding assets that may experience a fork in a non-custodial manner is the best way to ensure that you will get a forked crypto asset, should a blockchain split occur.

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What do you think of Coinbase’s decision to possibly list the proposed PoW version of Ethereum called ETHW? Let us know what you think about this topic in the comments section below.

Jamie Redman

Jamie Redman is the news editor at Bitcoin.com News and a financial technology journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open source and decentralized applications. Since September 2015, Redman has written more than 5,700 articles for Bitcoin.com News about the disruptive protocols emerging today.