What is EthereumPoW (ETHW) crypto coin?

EthereumPoW (ETHW) isn't just another cryptocurrency. It's a direct result of one of the biggest shifts in crypto history - when Ethereum abandoned mining forever. On September 15, 2022, Ethereum completed The Merge, switching from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. For millions of miners who had spent thousands on GPUs, this was a disaster. Their rigs suddenly became useless. That’s when EthereumPoW was born - a community-driven fork designed to keep Ethereum’s original mining system alive.

Why EthereumPoW Exists

Before The Merge, Ethereum was mined using GPUs. Miners around the world ran rigs with NVIDIA and AMD cards, securing the network and earning rewards. When Ethereum moved to proof-of-stake, those miners lost their income. No more block rewards. No more transaction fees. Just silence. ETHW stepped in to give them a lifeline.

It wasn’t created by a big company or a VC. It was built by miners - led by figures like Chandler Guo and backed by mining pools like Flexpool and 2Miners. The fork happened exactly at Ethereum block 15,537,393. Every transaction, every smart contract, every wallet address from before The Merge was copied over. ETHW didn’t try to reinvent Ethereum. It just kept it running as it was - proof-of-work, GPU-minable, and open to anyone with a decent graphics card.

How ETHW Works

ETHW uses the same Ethash algorithm as pre-Merge Ethereum. That means you still need a powerful GPU to mine it. ASICs aren’t the main players here - unlike Bitcoin, where ASICs dominate, ETHW is still friendly to individual miners. A single NVIDIA RTX 3080 or better can still earn rewards, though profitability depends heavily on electricity costs.

The block time is still around 13-15 seconds, just like old Ethereum. Block rewards are 2 ETHW per block, plus whatever transaction fees are attached. As of early 2024, the circulating supply sits at about 107.8 million ETHW. That’s less than Ethereum’s original supply because some ETH that got staked during The Merge couldn’t be claimed on the PoW chain.

Gas fees on ETHW are incredibly low - averaging just 5 Gwei. Compare that to Ethereum’s 20-50 Gwei, and you’ll see why some developers still use it for cheap testing or low-value dApps. Transaction speeds are slower, though. While Ethereum confirms in 15 seconds, ETHW often takes 45 seconds or more, especially during spikes in usage.

How ETHW Compares to Ethereum and Ethereum Classic

It’s easy to confuse ETHW with Ethereum Classic (ETC). Both are proof-of-work forks of Ethereum, but they’re not the same.

Ethereum Classic has a fixed supply cap of 210 million ETC and has been around since 2016, after the DAO hack. It’s more stable, with higher hashrate (12 TH/s vs ETHW’s 1.2 TH/s) and way more dApps - over 100 active ones, compared to ETHW’s 12. ETC also has stronger exchange support and more developer activity.

Ethereum, on the other hand, is now a proof-of-stake chain. You can’t mine it anymore. To participate, you need to stake 32 ETH. That’s expensive and centralized - most staking happens through centralized exchanges. ETHW’s whole point is to avoid that. It keeps mining decentralized.

Here’s a quick comparison:

ETHW vs Ethereum vs Ethereum Classic

Feature	EthereumPoW (ETHW)	Ethereum (ETH)	Ethereum Classic (ETC)
Consensus	Proof-of-Work	Proof-of-Stake	Proof-of-Work
Block Time	13-15 seconds	12-14 seconds	13-15 seconds
Block Reward	2 ETHW	0 ETH (staking rewards only)	2.56 ETC
Gas Fee (avg)	5 Gwei	20-50 Gwei	8 Gwei
Hashrate	1.2 TH/s	~1,000 TH/s	12 TH/s
Active dApps	12	5,800+	100+
Market Cap (Q2 2024)	$105M	$412B	$5.8B

Who Uses ETHW and Why

Most ETHW holders are miners. According to Nansen analytics, 82% of ETHW addresses belong to mining pools or individual miners. That’s not surprising - the coin exists to serve them. There’s very little institutional or enterprise use. No major DeFi protocols, no NFT marketplaces, no Web3 apps are built on it.

Some people still mine ETHW because:

• They already own GPU rigs and don’t want to sell them at a loss.
• They believe in decentralized mining as a check against centralized control.
• They use it to test smart contracts cheaply - low fees make it ideal for experimentation.

But for most, the reality is harsh. Mining profitability has collapsed. In late 2022, ETHW miners were earning $1.2 million per month. By mid-2024, that dropped to $187,000. At current prices (around $0.96 per ETHW), you need electricity under $0.07 per kWh just to break even - and that’s before factoring in hardware depreciation.

Reddit threads like “Why I abandoned ETHW mining” have thousands of upvotes. People who spent $3,500 on RTX 3080s now earn $10 a day - if they’re lucky. For many, it’s no longer worth the noise, heat, and power bill.

Problems and Risks

ETHW faces serious challenges:

• Low security: With only 1.2 TH/s hashrate, it’s vulnerable to 51% attacks. Ethereum Classic has 10x more. A single mining pool could theoretically take over.
• Limited adoption: Only 12 dApps are active. No major wallets or DeFi platforms support it natively.
• Exchange instability: BingX, the most active exchange for ETHW, has delisted it without warning. Users report sudden liquidity drops and withdrawal delays.
• Declining miner base: Monthly active addresses dropped from 1.2 million in late 2022 to 87,000 in mid-2024. The network is shrinking.
• No innovation: ETHW can’t upgrade without consensus. Unlike Ethereum, which evolves constantly, ETHW is stuck in 2022. Even EIP-1559 (a fee-burning upgrade) is delayed.

The EthereumPoW Foundation tried to help with a “Miner Sustainability Initiative,” using community funds to subsidize mining. But it’s a band-aid. The underlying economics don’t work anymore.

Can You Mine ETHW Today?

Technically, yes. But should you?

If you already have a GPU mining rig sitting idle, and your electricity is cheap, you might still make a little money. But don’t buy new hardware hoping to profit. The ROI is negative for most setups. Even with top-tier GPUs like the RTX 4090, you’d need to mine for over a year just to cover the cost of the card - assuming prices don’t drop further.

Setting up a wallet is easy. Just add the ETHW RPC endpoint (https://mainnet.ethereumpow.org) to MetaMask. You can send, receive, and even interact with the few dApps that still run on it. But don’t expect DeFi yields or NFT trading. The ecosystem is barely alive.

The Future of ETHW

The outlook isn’t promising. Galaxy Digital predicts ETHW has only a 35% chance of surviving past 2026. Outlier Ventures called its future “insurmountably challenging.”

It’s not that ETHW is broken. It’s that it has no reason to exist anymore. Ethereum’s move to proof-of-stake wasn’t just technical - it was economic. The value shifted. Miners lost their market. ETHW is a monument to a past that’s over.

Some will keep mining it out of loyalty. Others will use it as a test network. But unless something drastic changes - a new use case, a major partnership, a price surge - ETHW will keep fading. It’s a ghost chain, running on borrowed time.

Final Thoughts

EthereumPoW isn’t a competitor to Ethereum. It’s a relic. A protest. A last stand for decentralized mining. If you’re a miner who lost everything in The Merge, ETHW might still feel meaningful. If you’re an investor looking for growth, it’s a trap.

It’s a fascinating experiment in digital resilience - but resilience alone doesn’t create value. ETHW proves that even the most technically perfect fork can die if the world moves on without it.