EthereumPoW Core Team To Disband and Usher Decentralized Governance

The core development team behind EthereumPoW, the roughly one-year-old Proof of Work fork of Ethereum, is disbanding to transition the project to community governance.

On Dec. 19, EthereumPoW published its first blog since March, announcing plans to dissolve its core team. The announcement said the EthereumPoW network has reached a point of maturation where decentralized governance can support its ongoing operation independent of a core team.

“Following in-depth discussions and based on a majority consensus, we have reached a unanimous decision: the conditions for dissolving the core development organization have matured,” the team said.

OneDao, a Harmony-based protocol, will take control over EthereumPoW’s servers as a transitional step. “The existing servers will be temporarily transferred to OneDao for transitional maintenance until long-term ecological partners are identified,” the announcement added.

The news follows funding issues experienced by the EthereumPoW core team. On Nov. 30, the core team requested $200,000 to support its operations through 2024, stating the funds would be earmarked to maintain the project’s servers and recruit additional part-time engineers.

The core team’s wallet held just 10.75 ETHW ($29.58) at the time. The wallet now holds 11.5 ETHW worth $30.5.

EthereumPoW’s post-launch decline

EthereumPoW emerged as a minority fork following Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade — also known as The Merge — last September. The Merge transitioned Ethereum to Proof of Stake consensus, also booting its sizable ecosystem of Proof of Work miners from the network.

With $5B worth of mining hardware set to be displaced, some miners banded together to rally support for a Proof of Work fork. While some centralized exchanges pledged to support the forked chain’s token, analysts tipped that the entire EthereumPoW DeFi and dApp ecosystem would immediately collapse following The Merge.

EthereumPoW experienced a fraught launch, with its token crashing 75% in 24 hours and users claiming the network was inaccessible. Further, miners were earning just 10% of their former revenue by validating the chain.

While many miners looked to other Proof of Work networks supporting their hardware such as Ethereum Classic, Ravencoin, and Ergo, the massive influx of displaced hashrate nuked the profitability of validating said networks. Two weeks later, more than 80% of Ethereum’s former hashing power had gone offline.

EthereumPoW’s hash rate steadily fell from an initial peak of 68 terahashes per second (TH/s) before finding a floor near 9 TH/s in June 2023, before trending sideways until late November.

EthereumPoW makes a minor comeback

EthereumPoW has shown signs of recovery in recent weeks, with hashrate currently hovering near 15 TH/s after posting a local high of 17.3 TH/s.

The price of ETHW is also up 61% in 30 days following an uptick in volume, with the rally coinciding with the hashrate increase, according to CoinGecko. However, ETHW is down 92% since The Merge and tumbled more than 95% since ETHW futures began trading in August 2022.

EthereumPoW’s DeFi ecosystem has also doubled in size over the past month, according to DeFiLlama, but the network’s total value locked remains at a measly $191,500 after peaking at $6.8M last October.