The upcoming ETH Merge remains a highly anticipated and hyped event in the crypto space. Also, it has created different reactions and beliefs among institutional participants. The Merge is a transition to a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism from Proof-of-Work. Also, the scheduled launch date is on September 15, 2022.

However, as the date for the Merge draws closer, more sentiments are building on its possible hard forks. A group of miners has been threatening to hard fork the Ethereum mainnet after merging it with the Beason Chain.

Currently, the mainnet is operating as the PoW network that still allows mining activities. The Merge is expected to halt the mining process as the network will completely depend on staking for transaction validation.

The miners that intend to hard fork the main are looking for means to continue earning tokens from the network. The Ethereum mainnet will offer airdrops of ETH PoW tokens with such actions. The forked tokens have less value than the normal tokens, and not all crypto exchanges accept forked tokens.

Holders Could Maximize Their ETH Forked Tokens

But the co-founder of CoinGecko, Bobby Ong, gave some ideas to help token holders maximize their forked tokens. Through a tweet thread, Ong shared personal strategies concerning the Merge.

The co-founder explained that holders would soon receive PoW tokens as airdrops for the Merge. Hence, they need to understand how to maximize their earnings and holdings.

According to Ong, the ETH holders should use crypto exchanges that support forked tokens for their holdings. Alternatively, he suggested that they could use hardware wallets. This will also make the holder eligible to get the forked tokens.

Additionally, the co-founder stated that holders should engage in token bridging to maximize the number of tokens they could receive.

This process means that holders will bridge their holdings to the Ethereum mainnet and proceed to unwrap their Wrapped ETH (wETH). After, they should remove all their Ether liquidity from DeFi protocols and exchanges.

Possible Scams From Token Airdrops

Ong mentioned that not all airdrops are genuine, as there could also be scams. Hence, he revealed that despite his eligibility in getting all forked tokens, he wouldn’t claim all. He warned token holders that some scams would be a means of accessing users’ keys and signatures.

Also, the CoinGecko executive advised users to sell all their forked tokens. He disclosed that forked tokens have no considerable value or growth capacities for the community. They are just some temporary offers to pacify miners for a limited period.

Some platforms, such as OpenSea, an NFT marketplace, and Chainlink, a blockchain oracle, reported that they wouldn’t support forked tokens.

Featured image from Pixabay and chart from TradingView.com

OpenSea is a renowned marketplace similar to Esty, Amazon, and eBay. However, the only difference here is the items available for purchase. All items on the market are special digital collectibles that come as NFTs (nonfungible tokens). Market users can buy, sell, or mint these tokens.

OpenSea users carry out their transactions through self-executed smart contracts provided on the platform. This method of operation is quite significant for fair and successful trades.

The platform offers multiple trading options to users on the marketplace, such as atomic and peer-to-peer transactions.

OpenSea NFT Services Post Merge

While the marketplace proves to be a good platform for NFT transactions, OpenSea came up with new development in its services. The company recently announced that it’s not overly concerned about forked NFTs. However, it cited that its services will concentrate more on PoS NFTs.

The NFT marketplace announced on Twitter that potential forks would not reflect on its platform. Primarily, its services will be targeted at nonfungible tokens available on the upgraded blockchain network.

At the moment, OpenSea marketplace is improving its platform in wait for the upcoming Merge. The idea is to prepare the marketplace for possible hassles upon the Merge. This development is necessary to guarantee the successful transition of the network.

The marketplace encourages its users, citing that it’ll maintain uninterrupted communication until the migration process is complete. It believes that the Merge will go on smoothly without any major hitch. This is because its team is currently on the Ethereum website to check out the progress of the Merge.

Other Platforms In Watch

OpenSea is not the only company showing interest in the network transition. Chainlink is also expressing some level of commitment to the progress of the upgrade.

The Ethereum-based decentralized blockchain, Chainlink, also announced that it wouldn’t focus on Ethereum-forked NFTs. This is slated to kick off after the successful transition to the Proof of Stake system. However, Chainlink addressing its community cited that it’s doing its best to sustain the platform regardless of any hassle with the Merge.

Lex Sokolin’s Take On ETH Price

While some of ETH’s supporters believe that the Merge will impact the price of ETH positively, Lex Sokolin thinks otherwise. Sokolin, in an interview, cited that the price of ETH might be affected due to economic design changes.

He added that after the Merge, these changes might affect the supply of ETH, which will, in turn, reflect its price. Although the economist believes this could happen, he stated it’s not inevitable. Moreover, the digital currency market is the only decider of the price of Ethereum after the Merge.

In the meantime, the price of the upcoming Ethereum PoS fork’s native token trades at $100. Although it’s not available for sale yet, some exchanges already have it listed on them.

Featured image from Pexels, chart from TradingView.com

Input Output Global (IOG) had earlier informed members of the Cardano ecosystem of the postponement of the deployment of the network’s Vasil Hard Fork to the testnet. Interestingly, in a Twitter thread on 3 July, IOG confirmed to the community members that it had successfully hard forked the Cardano testnet.

Speaking on the next steps, IOG stated that it had invited SPOs, developers building on Cardano, and exchanges to commence their final testing and integration processes. According to it, this testing phase would last four weeks as per the request from the Cardano community. A hard fork would then follow for the Cardano mainnet.

According to data from CoinMarketCap, the price of Cardano’s ADA had gathered momentum before the announcement. However, following the announcement and after the coin had touched a high of $0.458, the bears forced a correction, and the price embarked on a downward spiral. So what happened in the last 24 hours?

Harbinger of doom?

ADA started yesterday’s (3 July) trading session at an index price of $0.452. As trading progressed, the price per coin declined and marked a low of $0.445. Although, the bulls were able to force a correction that pushed the price back to the $0.45 level. 

However, following the announcement by IOG, the price of ADA started to plummet. By press time, the coin had returned to the $0.44 level. Exchanging hands at $0.4485 per at the time of writing, a 0.36% decline was posted in the last 24 hours. Trading volume also registered an 8.33% decline in the last 24 hours. 

Source: CoinMarketCap

With ADA price mainly represented by red candles in the last few days, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) of the coin lived beneath the 50 neutral region since the beginning of June.

Facing south, the RSI was caught at 39.80 while writing. Reaching for a position beneath the 50 neutral region, the Money Flow Index was  spotted on a downward curve at 55 during press time

Source: TradingView

Not a single hoot was given

According to data from Santiment, the ADA did not record any on-chain growth in the last 24 hours. For example, the count for the number of daily active addresses transacting ADA has logged an 81% decline in the last 24 hours.

Source: Santiment

Transaction volume for the coin in the last 24 hours also registered a 68% drawdown. At press time, this was 318 million. On 3 July, it saw a high of over one billion. Valued in USD, the transaction volume declined from $847.13 million to $150.64 million.

Source: Santiment

Further, despite the announcement, data from Santiment revealed that the whales have also looked the other way. The count for whale transactions above $100,000 recorded an 82% drop in the last 24 hours. Within the same window period, the count for whale transactions above $1 million also saw an 80% decline.

Source: Santiment

Despite ADA’s reaction within the last 24 hours, the Vasil hard fork remains the most anticipated network upgrade in the cryptocurrency space in the last few months.

Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK), a blockchain infrastructure research and engineering company behind the development of the proof-of-stake Cardano platform, announced the successful upgrade of its Alonzo testnet as it forked to the new Alonzo White node.

The full launch of Alonzo, which introduces smart contract functionality to the blockchain, is expected to spur the development and deployment of various DeFi applications.  

Upgrades keep upgrading

With this latest release, the Alonzo platform rollout keeps unraveling according to plans, while the Cardano blockchain gets another step closer to finalizing its multi-phase upgrade.

Following the first upgrade phase, Alonzo Blue, Cardano’s developers “successfully forked the Alonzo testnet to new Alonzo White node,” marking the beginning of the second stage of Alonzo’s full launch.

HARD FORK SUCCESSFUL: Delighted to report around 19.44 UTC today we successfully forked the #Alonzo testnet to the new #AlonzoWhite node. The new network is happily making blocks already. 1/5

— Input Output (@InputOutputHK) July 14, 2021

Each upgrade phase, named blue, white and purple, introduces more users, functionality, and features as the program expands and the new testnet functionality and features get integrated, leading to the final deployment on the Cardano mainnet, planned for September of this year.

“With Alonzo smart contracts around the corner, every team across the company continues to be very focused on core Goguen capability,” according to Cardano’s open-source wallet product manager Darko Mijić.

Along with adding functionality in the form of smart contracts, the so-called Goguen era of Cardano’s development represents a huge leap in capabilities for the network, including the addition of a multi-currency ledger, which enables the creation of new natively-supported tokens.

Developers keep developing

Meanwhile, IOHK CEO Charles Hoskinson teased a groundbreaking stablecoin design on Twitter yesterday.

Been Busy. pic.twitter.com/mmYGoBAsPO

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) July 15, 2021

IOHK CEO posted four screenshots of a long announced article that describes ” a formally verified crypto-backed pegged algorithmic stablecoin.”

It’s safe to expect that the algorithmic stablecoin protocol dubbed Djed won’t rest in the theoretical realm as Hoskinson gave a hint to IOHK’s new innovation product.

Algo Stablecoin done

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) July 15, 2021

As the addition of the Alonzo upgrade will enable Cardano to compete with other DeFi ecosystems like Ethereum (ETH), the network’s developers launched its “Catalyst Circle,” a new feedback and reporting model for its community-driven innovation fund “Project Catalyst.”

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