Three cryptocurrency exchanges facilitate the trade of tokens reflecting a potential Ethereum proof-of-work split.
Poloniex and MEXC were the first spot exchanges to launch these tokens over the weekend. Today, BitMEX linked the two by introducing ETHPoW, a futures product based on the tokens.
ETHPoW Futures will facilitate ETHPoW trading in the form of a derivative contract. The futures contract will employ Tether (USDT) as margin collateral and will begin trading on Tuesday under the ticker ETHPOWZ22.
The notion of a miner-led Ethereum fork gathered traction when Chandler Guo, a prominent Chinese cryptocurrency miner, said on Twitter last week that he would fork the Ethereum blockchain to ETH POW. The split, he said, would enable miners to continue operations after Ethereum’s upcoming move from proof-of-work (PoW) consensus to proof-of-stake (PoS).
Poloniex and MEXC let ether holders exchange ETH for ETHPoS (IOU) and ETHPoW (IOU) at a rate of 1:1. Unlike derivatives, IOU tokens enable users to trade the native asset of a blockchain that has not yet been published. On these two exchanges, the ETHPoS (IOU) token trades for around the same price as ETH, but the ETHPoW (IOU) token trades for much less, between $125 and $130, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
If Ethereum’s proof-of-stake upgrade is implemented without a hard fork, Poloniex and MEXC will suspend and delist IOU tokens and their related markets. These listings are highly speculative since they permit the trade of an asset that has not yet been created and may never be created.
Other cryptocurrency exchanges, including Huobi, Gate, Digifinex, and OKX, have begun to rally behind the split and have pledged to list the forked forms of ether. However, these exchanges have not yet released specifics about their listing strategies for ether forks. Last Saturday, Huobi was still analysing the concept, stating that it would advertise any Ethereum hard forks that met specific criteria.
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