The world-leading NFT marketplace OpenSea has publicly declared its support for the Ethereum Merge later this month.
As such, it will not support any speculative Ethereum forks that follow its activation – such as a potential ETHPoW fork.
- The marketplace confirmed its support for the Merge in tweet on Wednesday. “We are committed to solely supporting NFTs on the upgraded Ethereum PoS chain,” it read.
- It also noted that any NFTs circulating on a possible ETHPoW fork, after the merge, will not be reflected on or supported by OpenSea.
- Besides that, the company expects a smooth transition to proof of stake (POS) Ethereum. “We’re committed to monitoring, managing, and communicating throughout,” it said.
- The merge will reduce Ethereum’s energy consumption by over 99% while preparing it for sharding – a scaling solution further down the protocol’s roadmap. It will also allow ETH holders to stake their coins and secure the network for profit.
- However, a collection of Chinese Ethereum miners have been orchestrating an Ethereum fork that will retain proof of work past September. Though not yet confirmed, BitMEX has already begun offering leverage trading for the non-existent chain.
- Organizations like OpenSea can only support assets circulating on one of the chains to remain functional. So far, most major companies are planning to treat the POS Ethereum chain as canonical.
- For example, the two largest stablecoin issuers – Circle, and Tether – have already agreed to solely support the merge. This means that USDC and USDT circulating on other forks will lose their peg to the dollar.