As the upcoming Ethereum merge continues to cause excitement within the crypto space, Ethereum Classic (ETC), a sister of Ethereum, has seen an 83% increase in hashrate since June according to Gayatri Dhumal, a researcher at BitwiseInvest.
As the hashrate of Ethereum Classic surges, Ethereum on the other hand has dipped by 11%.
Why is ETC hashrate surging?
Ethereum Classic has been the largest beneficiary of the upcoming Ethereum merge that has caused a massive exodus of Ethereum miners as the mining of Ethereum comes to a halt with the Ethereum merge upgrade.
Ethereum miners are opting out and the closest blockchain is Ethereum Classic.
While there are some efforts to launch new hard forks of Ethereum after the Merge, a majority of blockchain protocols have committed to support Ethereum after the Merge upgrade by insisting that they shall not support any proof-of-work (PoW) forks of Ethereum afterwards.
As a result, Ethereum Classic remains the only Ethereum hard fork that legitimately exists.
Earlier this month, Vitalik Buterin, the Ethereum co-founder, said that “pretty much everyone” was supportive of the Ethereum Merge that will move it from a PoW to a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain.
Generally, Ethereum Classic is expected to win big after the merge as it will be left as the only Ethereum fork to enjoy the original Ethereum PoW mechanism.
Ethereum Classic is a hard fork of Ethereum. It forked back in 2016 following the infamous DAO attack that remains one of the most significant hacking in the history of cryptocurrencies. Ethereum Classic was created by those who wanted to preserve the original Ethereum chain.