Some Chinese miners announced they will be forking the ETH blockchain after "The Merge" in order to continue with the PoW consensus algorithm. If the fork goes full speed ahead, this means existing ETH holders will obtain "free" coins on the forked chain (ETHW). It'll be just like Bitcoin Cash (BCH) where Bitcoin (BTC) holders received the exact amount of coins on the other Blockchain network. While I believe making another ETH fork based on PoW is highly unnecessary (especially when we already have Ethereum Classic (ETC)), this could prove to be a profitable opportunity for those who cash out during the initial days of the fork. That is assuming ETHW will be worth some money after it's listed across major cryptocurrency exchanges. If it goes to zero, then why bother?
And just like what happen when Bitcoin fork to Bitcoin Cash, the fork coin price surge ahead in the beginning and then just tapered as the hype goes down.
I guess the Chinese miners doesn't want to have their machines obsolete or at least doesn't want to mine ETC because it has no value. But it will be just the same for ETHW. For sure the consensus will still be with ETH until those miners died down or sold off their gear because it's not worth to mine their ETHW.
So maybe in the beginning they will have a success, but once those who have received the airdrop free coins then there will be huge dump of ETHW.