Grayscale Still Deciding What To Do With ETHPoW

Cryptocurrency investment management company Grayscale will extend its review period to determine whether or not it should acquire and sell proof-of-work Ethereum.

Grayscale was tasked on behalf of shareholders to determine whether it should purchase and sell the proof-of-work fork of Ethereum (ETHPoW) after the Merge.

Read more: Proof-of-Work vs. Proof-of-Stake: What’s the Difference?

The initial review period needed to determine the utility and value of ETHPoW was expected to last less than 180 days. The company revealed on Thursday that it would extend this review period for an additional 180 days.

“The trading venues for the ETHPoW tokens have not yet been broadly established, and there is continued uncertainty both as to whether digital asset custodians will support the ETHPoW tokens and if trading markets with meaningful liquidity will develop,” the company said in a statement.

Specifically, Grayscale noted that the value of the token is likely to fluctuate significantly for a period of time if digital asset custodians choose to support the token and a trading market develops.

“As a result of this uncertainty, as well as the potential for significant volatility in prices for the ETHPoW tokens, it is not possible to predict whether Grayscale, as agent, will be able to acquire the ETHPoW tokens or the value, if any, that Grayscale, as agent, will be able to realize from sales of the ETHPoW tokens,” the company said. 

Following the Ethereum hard fork, which moved the network from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, the price of ETHPoW soared to $51.45 and then plummeted. It is currently trading at $3.40, according to information on CoinGecko.

Read more: Ethereum Switches to Proof-of-stake After 7 Years of Work

Ethereum proof-of-work enthusiast are still active on the chain. Recently noting in a tweet that there had been “impressive NFT projects” emerging on the network.

Despite this, it noted that due to the lack of funding and coordinated efforts in the ecosystem, the proof-of-work chain has not yet been able to escape its infancy stage. 

“​​If this situation continues to develop, developers, investors, and project parties may gradually lose confidence, and the entire ecosystem will gradually slip from existing NFT projects to a vacuum,” the network tweeted. 

A proposal to develop a EthereumPoW ecosystem DAO is underway, with the goal of encouraging more user activity on the chain.

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