Same Genesis Block Opposite Philosophies ETHW Versus ETH Three Years After The Split
ETHW traded around $0.2397 on March 29, 2026 on exchanges, down 99.8% from its all-time high price of $141.36 set right after the September 2022 fork. Ethereum holds $48 billion in TVL and currently has over 8,400 validators. EthereumPoW, by contrast, runs on roughly 12 active nodes with TVL under $1 million. The two networks compared here forked away from one another back in September 2022 and previously shared the exact same codebase. They have separated so far in different directions over 42 months that they no longer resemble crypto cousins. Different consensus mechanism choices, developer support and even day-to-day business decisions like exchange listings have compounded over time to create this startling difference.
To those still wondering what is ETHW: ETHW (short for EthereumPoW) simply chose to keep using the proof-of-work mining algorithm that Ethereum left behind when it merged to a proof-of-stake consensus at The Merge. Before the consensus vote, the ETHW Core team froze the difficulty bomb and EIP-155 hard-forked for replay protection, and the community voted to continue mining ETHW. That decision to remain proof-of-work became ETHW's identity. But it also became its limit.
ETHW price sits at $0.328 at the time of writing in late April 2026, down roughly 83.65% over the last year. Ethereum is trading north of $1,700. First things first, those are the numbers that frame every other comparison below. But they also frame a very direct question: did proof-of-work mining maintain value long term, or just maintain a codebase at the expense of community?
EthereumPoW versus Ethereum across five fundamentals as of April 2026. Sources: CoinGecko, Coinbase, CoinMarketCap, Etherscan, exchange announcements.
Transaction Speed And Cost: Where The Chains Diverge
EthereumPoW claims it can do 235 TPS with recent boosts to transaction speeds. Furthermore, max block sizes for the coin have increased allowing more transactions per block. Ethereum by itself can do approximately 15-30 TPS raw transactions unassisted on the base layer. That transaction speed jumps into the thousands of TPS with the use of L2 rollups such as Arbitrum and Optimism. ETHW has a massive lead over ETH in raw base-layer speed. However that does not necessarily mean real world application.
ETHW coin currently has only 12 active nodes. With that level of threadbare infrastructure any clustering of mining power is immediately implicated as centralization. The validator set on Ethereum, for comparison, is over 8,400 strong. Over at the EthereumPoW explorer, you can plainly see how thinly trading activity is spread out. The 24 hour volume-to-supply rate is currently 6.5% and aggregate trading volume sits at $5.23 million. There's just no way around it at this point. The network is grossly overbuilt for its userbase. Ethereum, meanwhile, is moving billions of dollars of value on-chain every day. The difference in performance isn't based on capability, it's based on usage.
EthereumPoW gas prices are also low both by design and because there is literally no network activity. You can connect your ETHW wallet to MetaMask and send tokens for less than a cent of gas. Ethereum gas prices depend on demand and can reach astronomical levels if the network is busy. However, since the deployment of EIP-4844 (proto-danksharding) in March 2024, layer 2 fees have seen a massive decrease. ETHW provides an option for users who want cheaper fees and don't need access to Ethereum's liquidity. The real question is whether anyone will use it.
Developer Commits Dropped Eighty Three Percent: Who's Still Building
The most telling aspect of this comparison comes from GitHub activity. Year-over-year, developer activity in the EthereumPoW repository decreased by 83%. After the ETHW Core team shuttered operations in December, maintenance of the ETHW client code has fallen to a volunteer group that carries the same moniker. Recent commits have been focused on merging in Ethereum code upgrades that have occurred since the Merge, updating boot-node configurations, and blocking messages from the ETH PoS network to prevent cross-chain replay attacks. These are examples of maintenance updates, not feature work.
All the while Ethereum continued iterating on its network with the Dencun upgrade in March 2024 and further roadmap steps towards full danksharding and statelessness. Thousands of developers work on Ethereum's core protocol and its sprawling ecosystem. Builder activity explains a lot of the disparity in adoption. Protocols follow developers and developers follow users. By that logic ETHW's ecosystem was fighting gravity from the start.
The ETHW wallet still says there are over 280 dApps with a total TVL of $187 Million as of an old 2025 snapshot. However those numbers are very disconnected from reality considering recent data showing TVL of less than $1 million. Looks like a lot of those "dApps" are now dead or moved on. Easily visible to anyone with an ETHW explorer checking on-chain activity. The majority of the dApp ecosystem used to try and legitimize the fork is now dead. Ethereum's DeFi, NFT and real-world asset verticals continue to expand.
ETHW does not have to be worthless because developers left. Volunteer developers can maintain the project via community governance. Furthermore, in March 2025 the SEC stated that PoW mining falls outside the scope of securities laws. ETHW token receives a regulatory leg up that Ethereum's staking model doesn't provide. For those mining specifically, this is important.
Exchange Exits And The Liquidity Spiral
The liquidity comparison wasn't even as favorable as it had been in past quarters. Bitfinex delisted ETHW from their exchange on July 16, 2025. OKX delisted ETHW on December 29, 2025, removing all spot and perpetual ETHW pairs. ETHW is down to 7 major exchanges after being listed on 9 at its peak. As more exchanges delist ETHW that means fewer places for new capital to enter the market and for current holders to trade on. This could lay the groundwork for a squeeze of holders to the few remaining exchanges.
As covered in our delisted altcoins write-up from last week, the average delisted coin saw price drawdowns of 20-40% after delisting events. ETHW has front row seats to the playbook. Fewer large exchanges with ETHW to USD trading has increased the number of bridges a trader has to hop through to make a trade. As you can guess, spreads have widened as a result.
Bitwise's ETHW ETF provided something of a counter narrative, albeit briefly. $18 million in inflows on January 3, 2026 offered a glimpse into institutional appetite. However, $11.2 million in net redemptions five days later wiped out much of the enthusiasm signaled by the ETF's flow. Nevertheless, the ETF provides critical access. Having a regulated U.S. on-ramp is no small feat for longevity. Flows through ETHW have, so far, signaled speculative positioning over sustained conviction.
Ethereum by contrast has none of these access problems. While the ETHW to USD trading pair is slowly thinning out there are ETH/USD trading pairs on every major exchange in the world. For end users trying to pick a platform on which to hold value, exchange availability isn't a feature on which to compare them, it's a survival metric. An ETHW wallet connected to fewer and fewer exchanges is an asset that actively punishes its holders by limiting their choices.
Which Chain Serves Which Users Today
Three years of price data, volume data, transaction cost data, community data, and developer activity data is sufficient to be absolutely certain about which chain reigns supreme in most categories. Ethereum leads on developer activity, DeFi ecosystem maturity, exchange access, institutional adoption, and raw network security by validator count. ETHW leads on base-layer transaction costs, and currently has a regulatory moat against Ethereum with miners due to existing SEC guidance. Throughput will be an ETHW advantage on paper, but ETHW's claimed throughput of 235 TPS against Ethereum's base layer is comparing apples-to-oranges when you consider Ethereum's Layer 2 ecosystem.
What ETHW is in 2026: an archive fork. EthereumPoW appeals to a particular segment of the Ethereum userbase. Miners who are married to proof-of-work consensus, and users who feel strongly about preserving the original philosophical intent of Ethereum pre-Merge. That segment of users exists. We know this because there are 29 social contributors to the network and it has small but nonzero trading volume. The question is whether that constituency is big enough to support a network into the future.
ETHW trading at $0.328 tells us that the market overwhelmingly decided the answer was no. A market cap of $35.38 million classifies the EthereumPoW token as an experimental microcap, not where serious Layer 1s operate. Ethereum has a multi-billion dollar ecosystem, meaning it plays in a completely different weight class. Stop trying to compare ETHW to Ethereum on even footing.
One constructive thought for future traders and would-be investors is simple and obvious: if you want DeFi, NFTs, real-world asset tokenization or general exchange liquidity, Ethereum is where to look. If you mine on proof-of-work chains, or are a user who specifically wants exposure to a network with PoW's regulatory clarity, you have cause to look at EthereumPoW. But do your research and know it has faced liquidity risk and exchange delisting. With other cross-chain alternatives available like ZetaChain, and established stablecoin issuers like Tether continuing to add more multi-chain support, ETHW will have to do more than just out-Ethereum Ethereum just to remain listed.
