Bitcoin Forum

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They are as important as in any other PoW network... they process transactions, for now. What we should be asking is, what will happen to the Ethereum miners once the hardfork to PoS happens?

Will they just dump all their mining gear in the market? can the machines used to mine the Ethereum algorithm be used to mine any other crypto in a lucrative way?

Personally I predict we will have 2 coins, Ethereum PoW and Ethereum PoS, and I can't wait to see how that plays out. See:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3649446.msg36685850#msg36685850

Miners are crucial for any decentralized cryptocurrency that is based on proof of work (PoW). And this is nothing that applies exclusively to Ethereum. Miners help record transactions in the public ledger. They keep the entire network safe, stable, and secure. So practically the most important aspects of any system of this type are in the hands of the miners.

Just like Bitcoin or any other Proof of work....
They create new blocks and solve cryptographic puzzles.
Take a look here, i tried to explain how it works https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3317586.0;topicseen

Ethereum is not PRoof of Stake yet.

Ethereum will be updating to casper very soon, could be a matter of days.
And if you want your transactions to go through you will need miners, whether it's pow or pos.

Interesting to see what really happens once a final decision on POS is made. Or is POS really happening soon like late this year or next year? I am also thinking of buying more rigs for eth but hesitant due to possible shift on POS in short notice.

Long explaining short, they confirm your transaction and thus you can't send or receive anything without them.

Now what makes you think of that, it's very important!

Mining operation is integral part of the whole crypto currency. I mean as long as the coin is mineable it has to be confirmed through maths solving and nothing else.

Miners play a major role in cryptocurrencies (anything other than PoW is basically futile) but you are overrating it.

Miners process transactions, that's all. They stack ASICs, they compete for hashrate, they try to hire smart engineers to improve the current ASIC chips... but without:

1) A good developer team creating a robust and solid software
2) A big array of decentralized full validating nodes all over the world

you basically have a shitcoin, so we need all of these factors, no exceptions.

It can be thought that without miners there would be no ETH network. It is precisely because of the miners' ability to guarantee the power of the whole network, which is the foundation of the contract. Without the miners supporting ETH, it will become worthless.

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 I think it was in their roadmap to turn ETH in to POS. Maybe those EH miners will turn to ETC and XMR. But if there will be another fork for POW and POS eth that would mean those mining hardware won't be dumped. Excited to see price of these GPUs to drop though. I have been meaning to try out some other coin to mine but wouldn't want to spend a lot for something that I'm just going to experiment and might fail to.

Miners are important to any cryptocurrency because without them then your transaction cannot be confirmed on the network. Basically, miners are the ones that keep a network running and make sure that everything runs smoothly. Unless they somehow change it, then miners will always be important to cryptos and they are very much needed or the whole thing stops working.

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So there should be a division between pow and pos? And basically we will have two class of miners in ethereum network, However, if the fork happen then there will be a sudden drop down of ethereum's price, so all should buckle up,  and there will be a competition over ethereum pow and pos. Can't wait to see which one will be better for HODLING, and which one will have more whales supporters.

they are important since they make work easily to have eth readily available for us

Miners are very important not just only to ethereum but to all crytocurrencies that there are, because this miners are the one who approves our every transactions and there will never be crypto without this miners.

If the miners were lost, the entire network of ETH would be undefended.
Then ETH will die.

There would only be a group of miners left... the current miners, assuming that they will continue mining said supposed fork (ETH-PoW). I don't include ETC as Ethereum miners, but ETC is already a fork.

In any case, the other end would be ETH-PoS, so this means no miners in there, and I predict ETH-PoS will be the leading one price wise, simply because Buterin will support that one, just like how ETH leaded in price vs ETC, because basically Buterin supported the DAO fork... proving that Ethereum is simply a centralized coin with a clear leader.

They are still important to the network because now the blockchain still runs on the power that is provided by the miners and until they switch to POS miners will always be important to the network. Without miners, the system wouldn't work and the coin will fail, it still needs miner as it is an important component for it to work