Chainlink agrees with the Ethereum Foundation and, as a result, will not support any forks of the Ethereum blockchain (including proof-of-work (PoW) forks) after the Merge.
Chainlink is Leaving PoW Forks Behind as it Converts to PoS Following Ethereum’s Hard Fork
As stated in its formal announcement, the Chainlink protocol will continue to operate on Ethereum’s blockchain after the Merge (that has been delayed more than once). As to Ethereum blockchain forecasts, the Merge between the mainnet and the Beacon Chain is scheduled to take place in September of this year.
With this, all Ethereum operations will switch to using proof-of-stake (PoS). The Merge project has been plagued by setbacks since the middle of the prior year. If the program follows the schedule set by its creators, then Phase 1 will begin the development of the ecosystem’s transaction history and the smart contracts based on the PoS network.
Smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain, which reached 1.45M in the first quarter of 2022, will be impacted by these changes. Chainlink’s function inside the project as a provider of hybrid services associated with smart contracts is also included. To avoid any problems before and after the PoS rollout, Chainlink will advise its customers in an exclusive declaration to update their smart contract functionalities to reflect the new requirements.
The Ethereum Network Will Become More Energy-Efficient.
The Merge is widely recognized as a watershed moment for the bitcoin market as a whole. It has been the subject of ongoing discussion in the community whether or not the network should evolve to PoS as a means of achieving greater decentralization, scalability, and sustainability. Official Ethereum documentation claims that switching to PoS will cut the network’s power consumption by as much as 99.5%.
According to the Ethereum website, the total energy used by the platform used to be the same as the energy used by the entire country of the Netherlands. However, PoS’s detractors argue that it is vulnerable to security breaches since it offers weaker protections than PoW. Solana, Polkadot, Avalanche, and Cardano are just some of the networks that are now utilizing proof-of-stake blockchains.
