The Ethereum Merge is Coming, Can the QuarkChain PoSW Mechanism Help PoW Miners Find New Opportunities?

According to Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s Merge will happen in the third quarter of 2022. The merge will combine the consensus layer (PoS beacon chain) with the execution layer (PoW original chain), and gradually stop the PoW part of the original chain. This upgrade represents the official switch of Ethereum to PoS.

The conversion of Ethereum PoW to PoS mining is a gradual process. The merge difficulty bomb in September is the beginning of the merge. The specific process can be briefly summarized as follows:

Difficulty bomb starts -> block production time is prolonged -> miners gradually leave -> network computing power drops -> TTD is set -> reach to the final difficulty -> switch from PoW to PoS (to achieve mainnet merge)

Under the PoS mechanism, the Ethereum revenue that miners can obtain will be related to the percentage of their staked ETH in the entire network, rather than the hardware such as mining machines. This means that Ethereum’s PoW mining will quit from the stage of history soon, and it also brings a certain pressure to the miners who are engaged in PoW mining.

In the face of the merge of Ethereum, many miners have the option of switching to other PoW chains for mining, such as the recently hyped ETC, ETHW, etc., but these traditional PoW minings cannot solve the basic problems of PoW, such as high energy consumption, 51% attack, etc. Especially once the merge is completed, ETC will face a huge 51% attack risk after the merge of Ethereum, judging from the fact that the computing power of ETC is only one-tenth of Ethereum.

The PoSW mechanism of QuarkChain just solves the problem of high energy consumption and 51% attack.

PoW and PoS are two of the most popular consensus with pros and cons respectively. QuarkChain came up with a new consensus called PoSW that combines both PoW and PoS.

PoW stands for proof of work, which is a competition of hash power. Whoever has stronger computing power has a higher chance to mine blocks. The good part is It has been run for almost 10 years. And it’s decentralized so that miners can join or exit the network for free. The bad part is low efficiency, high energy consumption, and the potential risk of a 51% attack.

PoS stands for proof of stake, whoever holds more stakes can mine or validate the block transaction.

The good part is high efficiency, low energy consumption, and all stakeholders can share the benefits. However, the bad part is nodes are not free to enter or exit, easy to be forked, and not decentralized enough

Is there a consensus to take the advantage of both PoW and PoS? The answer is, yes that is exactly why we need PoSW

A simple hybrid PoW/PoS — proof of staked work (PoSW) is exclusively developed by QuarkChain, and runs on the QuarkChain shards. This consensus allows miners to enjoy a 20-times reduction in the difficulty of mining if there are sufficient stakes in the miner’s address (currently 256 pieces per interval) based on the amount of native tokens they staked.

PoSW needs a mining machine just like PoW. It is open to every miner without a permit. If miners stake QKC when mining, they will be given more hashpower and enjoy the benefits of lower mining difficulty.

Moreover, PoSW network is more resistant to attacks. Assume the hashpower of the entire network is X, more than 0.5x hashpower is needed to make a 51% attack. The hashpower will be increased by more than 10x through token staking in the PoSW consensus. Thus the hashpower needed to make a 51% attack is way higher than the original 0.5x

There are 2 ways for miners to get QKC to stake: 1) buy QKC directly and 2) work with a QKC holder. A Miner can mine directly by using the address where a holder stores the QKC after they reach an agreement for splitting the gains.

QPool, a mining pool that supports QKC mining was launched recently. One can join the pool using any ETH mining machine. QPool supports miners to switch between ETH mining and QKC mining with one simple click. In the future, it will support more functions and provide smart contracts that help token holders and miners collaborate.

QuarkChain Official Links

Website: https://www.quarkchain.io
Telegram: https://t.me/quarkchainio
Discord: https://discord.me/quarkchain
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quark_Chain
Medium: https://medium.com/quarkchain-official
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/quarkchainio/
Developer Community: https://community.quarkchain.io/