With the Ethereum merge expected to take place between Sept. 10 and Sept. 20, Binance said it will refund users affected by a potential fork of the Ethereum chain an equal amount of their ETH holdings.
Binance announced on Aug. 25, its plan to support and protect users’ funds regardless of the outcome of the Ethereum merge.
Deposits and withdrawals will be suspended
For a start, Binance said it will suspend deposits and withdrawals for ETH and ERC-20 tokens during the Bellatrix consensus and Paris execution layer upgrades happening on Sept. 6 and Sept 15, respectively.
If a fork happens, Binance will refund users
Binance also hinted at two likely scenarios post-merge.
In the event that the mainnet does not split, no new token will be created. In this case, Binance will reopen deposits and withdrawals as soon as possible.
On the other hand, if the merge results in a fork of the Ethereum chain, a new token will be created and the PoS chain’s token will retain the “ETH” ticker. Binance will refund users 1:1 of the forked token.
We will then credit to users’ Binance accounts the forked token from the minority chain at a ratio of 1:1, based on the snapshot of ETH balances before the Paris execution layer upgrade
Binance also stated that the forked token will be subjected to its strict listing process before it can start trading.
Staking services will be paused
Binance users who have their ETH staked in the BETH pool will not be able to make deposits or withdrawals from Sept. 14 to Sept. 16.
The DeFi staking option will also stop receiving new subscriptions during the Merge period. All staking services will be resumed once the Merge is successfully executed.