2 min read
After Ethereum’s successful merge, miners began switching their rigs to other blockchains.
Ethereum Classic (ETC), a hard fork of Ethereum executed following the 2016 DAO hack, saw its network hash jump nearly 300% from 66.54 terra hashes per second (TH/s) last night to 265.43 TH/s today, per data from 2miners.
The tremendous increase in hash rate can likely be attributed to the Ethereum merge earlier today.
Hash rate of ETH over the past 24 hours. Source: 2miners.
After the merge, Ethereum no longer supports the energy-intensive, proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm and the mining hardware that supports it.
That same mining hardware does, however, still support Ethereum Classic’s Ethash mining algorithm, which may be why the forked network’s hash rate has skyrocketed recently.
Hash rate measures the total computational power used to mine and process transactions on a blockchain network. The higher the hash rate, the more decentralized the network with high levels of security.
In August 2020, for example, an extremely low hash rate of 2.9 TH/s resulted in a 51% attack on Ethereum Classic. Since then, the hash rate has grown by a whopping 9,052%, making the network more secure than ever.
ETC, the native coin behind Ethereum Classic, is up 2.81% over the past 24 hours and trades at $38.18, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
The total trading volume of ETC across different exchanges is up 85.47% in the last 24 hours.
Other PoW-based blockchains, including Ravencoin and Ergo, have also seen increased hash rates post-merge.
Based on the X16R mining algorithm, the Ravencoin blockchain’s hashrate doubled from 8.29 TH/s to 18.47 THs over the past 24 hours, according to data from 2miners.
Ergo (ERG), another PoW blockchain that supports GPU mining, saw its hash rate jump over 372% in the last 24 hours from 29.05 TH/s to 157.56 TH/s currently.
ERG, the native coin of Ergo, is also up 14.51% to $4.93 over the past 24 hours, per data from CoinMarketCap.
Based on when each of these hash rates began rising, it’s likely that the latest Ethereum upgrade is fueling further miner emigration.
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