# ETH Fork, What it mean in a Layman Explanation By [CaptainTee](https://paragraph.com/@captaintee) · 2022-08-11 --- When you hear that a project support only Ethereum Network what comes to your mind is the high gas fee you will spend to interact with such platform and you will prefer to interact with dApp that supports low gas Networks fee like Polygon, Fantom, Solana or go for Ethereum layer 2 such as Arbitrum, Optimism, zkSync Etc  **Here is why** Ethereum uses transaction processing method known as **Proof-of-Work (PoW)** and under this method, People that process transactions are called **Miners** and the cost of being a miner is very high as they too need to invest heavily in getting **Machines** and **Energy** to maintain their Miner status. This makes them charge a lot of money for processing transactions. On the other hand, the likes of Polygon, Fantom, Solana Etc uses **Proof-of-Stake (PoS)** method of processing Blockchain transactions. Under this method, people that process transactions are referred to as **Validators** and the cost of being a **Validator** is much cheaper than being a **Miner.** Holding and staking minimum of **32 ETH** would make one qualify to be a **validator** **Proof-of-Stake (PoS)** was introduced to solve the problems of **Proof-of-Work (PoW)** **Proof-of-Stake (PoS)** was able to solve **Speed** issue **Proof-of-Work (PoW)** and was also able to solve **scalability** issue Proof-of-Work. Blockchains using **Proof-of-Stake (PoS)** such as Fantom, Solana, Polygon Etc are **faster** considering their **Transaction Per Seconds (TPS)** and more **scalable** than Blockchain using **Proof-of-Work (PoW)** such as Ethereum Despite all the improvements **Proof-of-Stake (PoS)** brought to the Crypto space, it still failed to beat **Proof-of-Work (PoW)** in one area, probably the most important area and that area is **SECURITY** Exactly 1 year ago today, August 10, 2021, A White Hat Hacker stole about **$610M** worth of assets across Polygon Network (Both on DEX and CEX) The first IDO to be launched on **Raydium** DEX last year 2021 make the whole Solana Network to be congested with transactions. Same thing happened when **SolChick** hosted its IDO same last year. On these two occasions, **Validators** maintaining the Network has no option other than to shut down the network. **Sigh!!! ETH killers in the MUD** The unbeatable security of **Proof-of-Work (PoW)** which Ethereum uses has made some people to choose it over **Proof-of-Stake (PoS)** while many also think **Proof-of-Stake (PoS)** is still better and this has for a long time causes serious debate among the top users and this is about to result into the fast approaching **FORK**. Let's briefly talk about what **FORK** is; **A fork** happens when a change is made to Blockchain Protocol or basic set of Blockchain rules. Majorly; there are two types of **FORK** which are **Soft Fork** and **Hard Fork** **Soft Fork** happened when a Blockchain make adjustments or upgrade its Network for better performances.  **Hard Fork** is the real deal here. 5 years ago, **Bitcoin** was undergoing similar discussion when some **“Who is Who"** in the space want the Bitcoin Network to be more Scalable and able to process transactions faster, they decided to go for a **Hard Fork** which brings the existence of **Bitcoin Cash** from Bitcoin With this development, Bitcoin Network is spilt into two different chains with **BTC** serving as the token to cover gas fee on **Bitcoin Network** while **BCH** serving as the token to cover gas fee on **Bitcoin Cash Network** When this happened then, all holders of **BTC** were given free **BCH** in ratio **1:1.** This is one of the good Airdrops in history. **BCH** traded at **$4355** ATH back then in 2017 while **BTC** was trading around **$9,000** then **What will happen if Ethereum is eventually Hard Forked** There is will be Networks on Ethereum with each having their Gas Fee token The present Ethereum that uses **Proof-of-Work (PoW**) will continue using this existing **ETH** or we can refer to it as **ETHPoW** The coming Ethereum Network that will use **Proof-of-Stake (PoS)** will have a new token called **ETH 2.0** or we can refer to it as **ETHPoS** **Good News:** There are high probability that holders of the current **ETHPoW** will get free **ETHPoS** **Sad News:** The Coming **PoW** may end up only improving the **PoW** and high cost of Gas Fee remain intact as before. When this Fork happened, hunters might make profit or loss and this is why **Olympio** on Twitter shared his own strategy of making profit and not loss (You may read the below tweet) [https://twitter.com/OlimpioCrypto/status/1557445405289365505](https://twitter.com/OlimpioCrypto/status/1557445405289365505) Want to know more about what is likely to happen to ETH and its holder after the merge, kindly read this tweet which is what a user opined [https://twitter.com/Montana\_Wong/status/1556706440726716416](https://twitter.com/Montana_Wong/status/1556706440726716416) **Disclaimer: These few lines wrote above never constitute a/an Investment/financial advice.** --- *Originally published on [CaptainTee](https://paragraph.com/@captaintee/eth-fork-what-it-mean-in-a-layman-explanation)*