Vitalik Buterin calls out ETHW hard fork proponents as “trying to make a quick buck”

Speak­ing in a closed press con­fer­ence dur­ing South Korea Blockchain Week, Ethereum founder, Vita­lik Buterin, called peo­ple push­ing for a hard fork of Ethereum to retain proof-of-stake “sim­ply try­ing to make a quick buck.”

Justin Sun recent­ly announced sup­port for a hard fork of Ethereum post-merge by list­ing two new tokens on his Poloniex exchange. The tokens will be named ETHS and ETHW, relat­ed to proof-of-stake and proof-of-work, respec­tive­ly. ETHW will rep­re­sent a new­ly cre­at­ed hard fork of Ethereum where GPU min­ers con­tin­ue to mine Ethereum after the merge of the Bea­con chain. Some Chi­nese min­ers have report­ed­ly signed up to be a part of this new chain in con­junc­tion with Justin Sun.

Fur­ther, Sun is look­ing to incen­tivize a move to fork Ethereum to retain a ver­sion of the cur­rent net­work with­in a proof-of-work chain. He is offer­ing up to 1 mil­lion ETHW to build a devel­op­er com­mu­ni­ty should the chain become realized.

We cur­rent­ly have more than 1 mil­lion #ETH. If #Ethereum hard fork suc­ceeds, we will donate some forked #ETHW to #ETHW com­mu­ni­ty and devel­op­ers to build #ethereum ecosys­tem. https://t.co/ee4kGSuVoK

— H.E. Justin Sun🌞🇬🇩 (@justinsuntron) August 4, 2022

Vita­lik stat­ed that he has seen noth­ing but sup­port for proof-of-stake from with­in the com­mu­ni­ty and not­ed that most peo­ple who want to retain proof-of-stake are “out­siders” from the Ethereum ecosystem.

Justin Sun, the founder of the Tron blockchain, is undoubt­ed­ly an out­sider to the Ethereum ecosys­tem by many accounts. Vita­lik also ref­er­enced that pro­po­nents of a hard fork “own exchanges and are just try­ing to make a quick buck.”

Speak­ing on a ques­tion as to whether a hard fork could cause issues with NFTs liv­ing on both forked chains, Vita­lik replied, “I fore­see mar­ket con­fu­sion if that proof-of-work hard fork becomes some­thing substantial.”

How­ev­er, Vita­lik quick­ly put the onus on the proof-of-work chain instead of accept­ing that this could cause issues with what many will con­sid­er “main­net.” Should a fork gain trac­tion, Vita­lik expressed, “I’m sure there’s going to be prob­lems… if they want to make a fork, it’s on them to mit­i­gate those problems.”