After Chainlink, it’s the giant Circle that announces that it will not support the post-Merge fork of Ethereum (ETH). The issuer of the stablecoin USDC announces that it is already putting all the means in place to accompany Ethereum in its long-awaited next update.
Circle does not endorse the Ethereum fork
Circle, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, has spoken out about The Merge update to clarify its position through a statement on its website.
Its decision is clear: it will fully support Ethereum in its update, and its motivations are numerous. Circle explains in its post that the USDC is the most capitalized stablecoin on this blockchain with $47 billion in assets and as such is an essential component of the Ethereum ecosystem and innovation in decentralized finance (DeFi). Thus, we can read:
“We understand the responsibility we have to the Ethereum ecosystem and the businesses, developers and end users that depend on the USDC, and we intend to do the right thing. […] USDC, as an Ethereum asset, can only exist as a single valid version, and as previously stated, our only plan is to fully support the upgraded Ethereum PoS chain.”
Circle further clarifies that it has taken steps to ensure that the transition from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS) will be seamless:
“We do not anticipate any disruption to USDC’s on-chain capabilities or our fully automated issuance and redemption services. Circle’s test environment is connected to the Goerli test network, and we will be closely monitoring its merger with Prater in the coming days.”
This is the second major blow to EthereumPoW (the name given to Ethereum’s upcoming fork), as Chainlink, the blockchain’s largest oracle network, also recently indicated that it would not support the initiative.
A fork that’s struggling to win over
The initiative for the post-Merge Ethereum fork was taken by Chandler Guo, a well-known Chinese cryptocurrency miner in the industry, who wants to preserve the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus so that miners on the network can continue to earn cryptocurrency from their activity.
Notably, the individual was among those who, in 2016, had wished to remain on the original Ethereum network, which later became known as Ethereum Classic (ETC). However, this task may now be much more complicated to accomplish given the vastness of the current network.
ETHPoW will need to achieve two things to survive: to have considerable economic and technical support, but also to generate enough demand for ETHW mining to pay off for its miners. At the moment, the project has just raised $12,000.
