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

At a private press conference at the South Korea Blockchain Week, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin called those seeking a hard fork of Ethereum to retain proof of stake just looking to make some quick money. I’m here.”

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

Additionally, Sun is looking to encourage moves to fork Ethereum in order to keep the current version of the network in the proof-of-work chain. He is offering up to 1 million ETHW to build a developer community should the chain materialize.

Currently over 1 million #ETH. If #ethereum After a successful hard fork, donate what was forked #ETHW To #ETHW Communities and developers building #ethereum ecosystem. https://t.co/ee4kGSuVoK

HE Justin Sun (@justinsuntron) August 4, 2022

Vitalik said that he has only seen proof of stake support from within the community, and that most people who want to hold proof of stake are outsiders in the Ethereum ecosystem.

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

When asked if a hard fork could cause problems for NFTs that exist on both forked chains, Vitalik replied:

But instead of accepting that this could cause problems that many see as the mainnet, Vitalik quickly put the blame on the proof-of-work chain. If the fork picks up momentum, Vitalik said: