The Merge has been “coming” for a long time already, but now it seems to be inevitable. Here you can find our article on possible outcomes of the Merge. Most crypto companies have made announcements to clarify their position on the event and its consequences. This is a short summary of the most popular reactions.
Here is what exchanges think:
- Binance released an announcement, which says that it will suspend deposits and withdrawals for ETH and ERC-20 tokens at the moment of the Merge and if no new tokens are created, will reopen them as soon as possible. The hard fork will be supported if it appears: “Scenario B. The chain splits into two competing chains and a new token is created. The “ETH” ticker will be used for the Ethereum PoS chain. We will then credit to users’ Binance accounts the forked token from the minority chain at a ratio of 1:1, based on the snapshot of ETH balances before the Paris execution layer upgrade (approximately at ETH mainnet block height of 15,540,293, or 2022–09–15 00:30 (UTC)). Withdrawals for the forked token will be supported.”
- Coinbase announced on its blog that “during the Merge, it will briefly pause new Ethereum (ETH), ERC-20, Polygon (POLY), Optimism (OP), PWETH, PUSDC, and PMATIC token deposits and withdrawals as a precautionary measure”. Also, the company said that they will evaluate any potential forks on a case by case basis in alignment with their standard asset listing policy.
- OKX seems to be less cautious: “OKX will support Ethereum’s upgrade and will not suspend ETH trading and transactions before or during the upgrade”. As for the fork, the position is nothing new (“OKX will evaluate and support the airdrop and withdrawal of forked tokens”), but there is an important note: ”If a new forked token is generated, it will have to be reviewed by OKX before it can be listed, as does any other crypto”. It means that there is a chance (even if slight) that the forked coin won’t get approval.
- KuCoin will suspend the deposit and withdrawal for ETH and ERC-20 tokens. Their position on possible fork is exactly the same as the one of Binance and OKX. By the way KuCoin became the first CEX to launch ETH Merge-related Events.
Cryptocurrencies that use bridges to ETH also have to show some caution to keep their stability.
- “SORA will stop the bridge around the hard fork, waiting to see when the new Ethereum network will be stable. Then we will restart the bridge to Ethereum once we are sure everything is okay, which could be about a week. At the time of the Merge, we will take a snapshot of Ethereum assets on our network and once we have clarity on the possible PoW forks, we will create a pow-fork version of those tokens and airdrop them to users on the SORA network,” — quoted Makoto Takemiya, the CEO and Co-Founder of SORAMITSU, a global technology company delivering blockchain-based solutions.
- Another important player, Circle, announced that they “ don’t speculate on the possibility of forks ” and stated that “Circle will fully and solely support USD Coin (USDC) and Euro Coin (EUROC) on the PoS chain post merge”. According to them USDC “can only exist as a single valid “version”. As well as others, the company will temporarily pause deposits and withdrawals of Ethereum assets to and from Circle accounts for approximately two hours before and after The Merge.
To sum up, the crypto companies are showing some signs of caution, although according to the developers the Merge should happen seamlessly. The hard fork is highly possible and quite anticipated according to their actions. Well, we’ll see how it all goes in a few days and we’ll observe…
