Ethereum ProgPOW author uninvited from ETC Summit due to Craig Wright association

Kristy-Leigh Minehan, the creator of Ethereum's progressive proof-of-work algorithm, was uninvited from ETC Summit.

Bob Summerwill, the summit organizer for ETC Cooperative, said he withdrew Minehan's invitation due to her connections with Craig Wright and Calvin Ayre.Connections to Craig Wright?

The Ethereum Classic Summit scheduled for Oct. 3 is now one speaker short.

Kristy-Leigh Minehan, the current CTO of Core Scientific, has officially been uninvited from the summit by the event's organizer due to her alleged involvement with some of the most controversial figures in crypto.

Bob Summerwill, the executive director at the Ethereum Classic Cooperative and community leader for the Ethereum Project, announced the news on Twitter, saying he was the one to uninvite Minehan.

"Craig Wright is a fraud, serial liar and perjurer, and Calvin Ayre is not much better. I cannot have the ETC Cooperative and the ETC Summit associated with such disreputable individuals and companies, so I chose to withdraw my invitation," Summerwill explained in the post.

Minehan's connections to Craig Wright and support for Bitcoin SV have pushed Summerwill to look deeper into her proposed algorithm updated to Ethereum.

The progressive proof-of-work algorithm makes it more difficult to develop specialized ASICs for Ethereum and makes general purpose hardware more cost-effective at mining ETH. However, after a discussion with Minehan on Discord, Summerwill decided to advocate against ProgPOW. The algorithm was partially created by a group of 40 individuals, in line with its open-source origins, with only a few of the members being publicly known.

He then urged the Ethereum community to "Strongly reconsider" whether it should proceed with implementing ProgPOW and called for stronger guarantees around the IP. "ProgPOW has undergone audits for security and potential backdoor concerns, as well as hardware optimisations. It is a gentle tweak to Ethash to fulfil its proposed properties in the original yellow paper," asserted Kristy-Leigh Minehan.

In light of recent events, there is a risk of an Ethereum hard fork if ProgPOW is implemented.