In September 2022, Ethereum is scheduled to start ETH 2.0's merge upgrade. As the world's first exchange supporting Ethereum and Ethereum Classic, Poloniex will give full support to Ethereum's upgrade and its potential hard fork. If successful, the Merge could create two parallel blockchains after the upgrade. All Ethereum ($ETH) holders on Poloniex will receive the forked assets at a 1:1 ratio when the upgrade is completed.
To mitigate the risks from market volatility during the hard fork and safeguard users' assets, Poloniex will list two "potential forked" $ETH tokens and the associated markets.
All $ETH holders on Poloniex will receive the forked assets at a 1:1 ratio when the upgrade is completed. To mitigate the risks from market volatility during the hard fork and safeguard users' assets, Poloniex will list two 'potential forked' ETH tokens and the associated markets. $ETHS (ETH2, Ethereum PoS) represents the token for the new PoS (proof-of-stake) chain; $ETHW (ETH1, Ethereum PoW) represents the token for the PoW (proof-of-work) chain that will potentially continue to exist.
If the ETH 2.0 upgrade ends up with more than one chain, $ETHS will be automatically converted into the upgraded $ETH at a 1:1 ratio and the $ETHS market will be delisted. After the hard fork, the PoW chain with the most hashrate will serve as the main chain of $ETHW. Poloniex will also support other PoW chains resulting from the fork, if any, and fully respect the community's opinions on the token naming. Poloniex will adapt the name of the token to the final community consensus and re-enable the token's deposits, withdrawals, and trading in due course.
If ETH 2.0 upgrade is completed without a fork (Ethereum transitions from PoW to PoS), the $ETH symbol will be retained. In this case, Poloniex will suspend and delist $ETHS, $ETHW, and their associated markets, and $ETHS will be converted to the upgraded $ETH.
