Vitalik Buterin: “The viability of controversial Ethereum hard forks will be determined by stablecoin issuers”

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The co-founder of Ethereum, speaking at the BUIDL Asia conference in South Korea, said that the future and viability of the network's controversial hard forks will be determined by the community.

The community's verdict will be influenced by the decisionissuers of centralized stablecoins, for example, Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC), Vitalik Buterin is confident. He sees “no indication” that any disagreement or anti-merger opposition will be an issue as the Ethereum network transitions to the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm. 

Buterin noted that probably in the comingyears, the blockchain of the second largest cryptocurrency in the world by capitalization may face controversial hard forks and this is when stablecoin issuers can have a big impact on the preferences of the community:

"I think it's definitely over timewill become a serious problem. The fact that stablecoin issuers decide which blockchain is considered true Ethereum could be a deciding factor in public acceptance of future controversial hard forks.”

Earlier, the Tether team, represented by Chief Technical Officer Paolo Ardoino and Frax Finance founder Sam Kazemian, announced
about its full support for Ethereum 2.0 (ETH2).Sam Kazemian clarified that “Frax is the fifth largest stablecoin in the world and therefore it makes sense to clearly communicate to the public the desire of FXS holders to support ETH2.”

Some participants in the crypto industry are not configuredmake drastic decisions. Cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex said it will support any potential Proof-of-Work (PoW) forks of Ethereum following the mainnet merger with Beacon Chain, which is scheduled for September 2022:

“As the world's first exchange to supportEthereum and Ethereum Classic, Poloniex will provide full support for the ETH upgrade and its potential hard fork. If successful, the merger could create two parallel blockchains after the update. All Ether holders on Poloniex will receive forked assets at a 1:1 ratio when the upgrade is complete.”

A statement from the Poloniex cryptocurrency exchange was made
after one of the largest players in the Chinese mining ecosystem, Chandler Guo, announced plans to continue PoW mining with the transition to the new ETHPoW blockchain.