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Ethereum's Biggest Mining Pool to Stop Offering Services for the Network

Ethermine will make the move once the Merge is completed, which is expected to occur on Thursday.

Ethereum classic (Shutterstock)
Ethereum classic (Shutterstock)

Ethermine, the world's largest Ethereum mining pool, will stop offering proof-of-work (PoW) services after the Ethereum network switches to proof-of-stake (PoS) and won't be following up with services for the planned PoW forks.

The Ethereum network is set to switch its consensus algorithm sometime on Thursday, which will eliminate the need for miners. Some in the community were proposing that the network forks to continue using the PoW method of validating transactions. Ethermine, however, decided not to "offer a dedicated mining pool for any of the planned Ethereum PoW forks," the pool said in a Wednesday post.

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Once the switch happens, PoW mining won't be possible on Ethermine, as "all Ethermine stratum servers will be shut down" and the pool will switch to withdraw-only mode, the pool said.

Ethermine users can use other affiliated servers to mine ethereum classic, an older PoW token. Users will also be able to mine ravencoin (RVN), ergo (ERGO) and beam (BEAM).

Ethermine is the world's largest mining pool for the Ethereum blockchain, according to Mining Pool Stats.

Read more: AntPool Supports Ethereum Classic Ecosystem With $10M Investment



Eliza Gkritsi

Eliza Gkritsi is a CoinDesk contributor focused on the intersection of crypto and AI, having previously covered mining for two years. She previously worked at TechNode in Shanghai and has graduated from the London School of Economics, Fudan University, and the University of York. She owns 25 WLD. She tweets as @egreechee.

Eliza Gkritsi