Question: Will there be a chain split - will we end up with 'ETH classic' and 'ETH proof of stake' after the upgrade or how does it work?
As long as one person keeps running the old software, the old chain is alive.
Even if nobody does it, somebody could start running it again at any time.
The different chains will have different market caps. And the general public will forget about chains that have sufficiently small market caps.
I wonder what will happen to Ether that is in custody. Like in the Greyscale Ethereum Trust or the 21Shares Ethereum ETP.
Has anybody ever checked the TOS of these companies on what will happen if multiple forks carry significant value?
Wouldn’t it make sense for miners to switch to a new Ethereum chain without the bomb?
who will take this chain seriously
If it has 51% of Ethereum’s current hashpower, somebody. (Ethereum Proof of Stake is the same number of forks away from Ethereum Classic.)
How is it defined? Like somebody releases a new version with the bomb removed. Most miners adapt it. Why is it then a fork? Because the bomb is a major feature? Otherwise, wouldn't ever software upgrade be considered a fork?
This scenario is definitely possible, but it requires a little more work than "one guy keeps running an old eth1 node".
Unfortunately not a single resource I found actually describes this process in an easy to understand fashion - pretty amazing considering we are talking about $200+ billion dollars....
It would be a bit messy.
However if you are sitting with a massive ETH mining rig, you would like to do something with your hardware.
The owners of the coins, the developers, the miners?
Actually I would argue it would be the exchanges: What the major exchanges choose to trade as Ethereum is what will continue.
Ultimately society/the market decides which version is worth more.
You would like to profit from your hardware*.
That's an important distinction, as what make you profit from your hardware, isn't running it on ETH in particular, it's running it on a cryptocurrency which is used. They could run it on ETC currently if they want to keep mining, but they don't as ETH represents more value. So whether they keep running on the fork is more about whether the cash will be there to mine on it and my impression is that it won't be there.
Currently there's quite a big smear campaign on the environment impact of cryptocurrency on the world. This is important for many people, thus will impact whatever they decide to do.
There was also always a preference toward the forks supported by the official developers. It's normal, as long as we have no reason to doubt their decisions, why change? In this case this is even more true as it's not questioning the decision, the intention is clear that it's about the miner hardware.
Let not forget also that this fork will be supported by peoples that proved that they could orchestrate a 51% attack for their own gains... which is pretty much the fear that was always there on cryptocurrencies...
There's no reason to believe people would go toward a fork, thus there won't be much value in mining on that fork versus any alternative cryptocurrency. If I was a miner, I would start selling my graphic cards... they are still sold for quite a bit of money currently and it's just a matter of time before the price crash and it become easy again to buy a new graphic card.