On August 31, 2022, Ethereum Classic’s hashrate reached another all-time high (ATH) this year at block height 15,850,811. Ethereum Classic’s global hashpower surpassed the 40 terahash per second (TH/s) region on Wednesday. Despite the fact that the network’s hashrate has risen a great deal, Ethereum’s hashrate remains relatively unchanged with just over 1,000 TH/s dedicated to the network.
66 mining pools dedicate over 1,000 terahashes to Ethereum, the network’s hash rate remains stable and unchanged
At the time of writing, Ethereum has a total difficulty of 12374533505752422, and the network will transition from a Proof-of-Work (PoW) network to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain when the total difficulty reaches 58750000000000000000 in approximately 13 days . through merge.
When the transition is codified into the codebase, ethereum (ETH) miners will no longer be able to mine the digital currency. There are roughly 66 ether mining pools currently dedicating Ethash hashrate toward Ethereum, and they represent 1.04 petahash per second (PH/s) or 1,040 (TH/s) of hashpower.
When the change happens, Ethush miners will have to create a separate network, and they can choose blockchains such as Ethereum Classic, Ravencoin, Beam, and Ergo. It has been widely reported during the past two months that many believe the Ethereum Classic (ETC) network will move the rewards of Ethereum miners to another chain.
In fact, ETC has seen an increase in recent times, and on August 31, 2022, the network hashrate reached an ATH tapping 40.73 TH/s at block height 15,850,811. However, while Ethereum’s hashrate has dropped some at the end of June, it has remained roughly the same since July 1, 2022.
Ethereum Classic could see massive wave of dedicated hashpower within the next two weeks
Ethereum’s hash rate has registered a slight increase during the past 62 days, and added TeraHash is the same amount of hashpower that secures the entire ETC chain. Ravencoin, Beam and Ergo Hashrate have registered modest growth in terms of hashpower, but nothing compared to ETC recorded since the first week of August 2022.
ETC’s hashrate has reached record all-time high achievements multiple times this week, and during the last 24 hours. With statistics showing that ethereum miners will likely continue mining ether all the way until the end (The Merge), Ethash-consensus chains like ETC may see a massive wave of dedicated hashpower within the next two weeks.
Several large mining pools, including Ethermine and Antpool, have explained that they plan to stop mining ether in a PoW fashion and will support the ETH 2.0 transition. In addition, Ethermine announced the launch of a liquid staking service dedicated to the ETH 2.0 chain, and Antpool once said it was dedicating $10 million in resources to the Ethereum Classic ecosystem.
Both mining pools (Ethermine, Antpool) and many others already mine ETC and are suggesting that pool participants choose another Ethash-consensus chain like ETC, RVN, BEAM, or ERGO when The Merge takes place. When the hashrate wave comes is anyone’s guess, as it is extremely profitable to mine ethereum (ETH) in comparison to mining coins that leverage other consensus algorithms.
As of Thursday, September 1, 2022 at 11:00 am (EST), data suggests that Bitmain’s new ethash miner Antminer E9 could generate an estimated $47.72 profit per day with 2,400 megahash per second (MH/s). An Innosilicon A11 with 1,500 MH/s can get an estimated $26.52 per day in Ether profits.
