Overview of the Popular Cryptocurrency Ethereum Classic

Proponents of Ethereum Big and Ethereum Classic cryptoprojects can’t come to a consensus: which of the coins should be considered the original Ethereum? Although, at first glance, the answer is obvious, it is Ethereum Classic that is the original chain, on the basis of which the hardfork was made at the initiative of most developers and community members, led by the project’s ideological inspirer Vitalik Buterin.  

Here is an excerpt from a statement by the founders of Ethereum Classic:

• We believe in decentralized, censor-resistant, immutable blockchain ecosystems.
• We believe in the original vision of Ethereum as a world computer that you cannot turn off by executing irreversible smart contracts.
• We believe that system forks are only possible to fix the actual errors of the platform, not to save unfulfilled contracts and self-interest.
• We believe in a censorship-resistant platform that anyone can truly trust.
• The code is the law.

The document somewhat resembles the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Nevertheless, this altcoin was called stillborn at first and seemed doomed. And we should say that, technically, the history of the ETC cryptocurrency project starts from block N1900000, after which the chain was split and ETH holders received ETC tokens to their wallets. In this review, we will talk in detail about the digital currency Ethereum Classic, its history of emergence, features and prospects.

Why was Ethereum Classic created?

The Ethereum platform was launched in the summer of 2015 and quickly enough gathered a large community around itself, which included not only blockchain engineers and crypto-anarchists, the technology of smart contracts seriously interested the world’s largest investors.

The DAO project, which was an independent investment fund operating within the Ethereum platform, was founded to effectively use the funds received. To guarantee a decentralized management model, the fund had its own tokens, which were distributed to investors. 

But alas, a vulnerability was found in the software code of The DAO and it was found not by one of the Ethereum team members or some white hacker, but by an intruder who stole 50 million dollars. Of course, after such an event the price of DAO tokens and ETH coin itself and the project was on the verge of bankruptcy.

True, the hacker was never able to reap the trophies from the attack. The wallet with the money was blocked. And to prevent this from happening again, after much debate, it was decided to restart the network with a new, corrected copy of the blockchain. But what about decentralization, you may ask?

Yes, indeed Vitalik Buterin and company rewrote the source code in order to give the investor their tokens back, and not everyone in the community liked that. Many felt that the key idea of distributed ledger technology could not be sacrificed to save the project. Those people openly stated that the DAO developers themselves were to blame, they should have checked the contract more thoroughly before launching it. And since the hacker was able to find the breach, he has every right to take advantage of it.

If the majority agreed with them, Ripple would probably be the second most capitalized ecosystem now, or maybe there would be no crypto-boom 2018. Hardly anyone would have invested much money in altcoins after such a scandal.

Nevertheless, the fighters for independence decided to separate themselves by releasing the ETC token, which preserved the primary source of the Ethereum platform. Almost immediately after its release, the coin managed to make its mark on the Poloniex exchange, which is notable for its strict rules regarding new projects. Its example was followed by Bittrex and Kraken, and miners were also interested in the new network, whose token was easier to mine than the big Ethereum. 

As a result, the Ethereum Classic project continues to exist to this day, although the project was on the verge of bankruptcy in the fall of 2020. Attackers managed to conduct a successful 51% attack, the likelihood of which the developers were repeatedly warned by white-hat hackers. For some time, the Ethereum Classic network was in a state of complete collapse, but still managed to survive. Let’s take a look at the future prospects of Ethereum Classic cryptocurrency.

Development teams

The ETC digital currency ecosystem does not have a single control center, several independent teams of blockchain engineers are working on the project. Each of the teams has its own sector of responsibility

• Ethereum Commonwealth – handles the Callisto Network test network. The Callisto virtual coin (CLO) is a fork of ETC, which is intended to be a “guinea pig”. All innovations will be tested on this altcoin before integrating them into the main network. This team is also responsible for supporting the official Classic Ether Wallet.
• ETCDEV – a team of programmers from different countries working on updates to the network.
• IOHK – develops and promotes the “Mantis” client node, created in the Scala computer language.
• ETC COOPERATIVE – responsible for marketing policy and public relations.
• ETC LABS – handles financial matters and maintains representative offices in Singapore and USA.

A major role in the development of the project was played by the head of Digital Currency Group Barry Silbert. It must be said that Vitalik Buterin himself never spoke negatively about Ethereum Classic. On the contrary, he said that he was following with interest the development of this project, and in 2020, allowed the possibility of a full merger of the two ecosystems. True, that was before the infamous events.

Differences from Ethereum

Let’s list the main differences between the networks:

• In the Ethereum project, Ethereum Foundation makes decisions about the further direction of the platform’s development, in Ethereum Classic, something can be changed only by agreement between all the development teams.
• The Ethereum community allows further changes to the program code and smart contracts if a majority (51%) of users vote for it. The Classic community considers blockchain redesign to be completely unacceptable. The code is the law!
• Issuance in the big Ethereum system is unlimited. ETC has 210,700,000 tokens.

If you compare Ethereum vs Ethereum Classic, the latter looks more orthodox, which attracts many crypto-enthusiasts. But, it is the open door policy adopted by Vitalik Buterin’s team that attracted DApps developers to the ecosystem. Most stable cryptocurrencies (TUSD, USDT, USDC, PAX, EURUS) are also based on Ethereum blockchain. The Classic team is also trying to work in this direction, but there is no real progress at the moment. The project has not yet fully recovered from the last year’s upheaval and no real competition with the “big brother” is out of the question.

Features of ETC mining

Earlier digital currency Ethereum Classic was mined using the same algorithm as the big Ether. At the moment it switched to a modified version of the Ethash algorithm and now ETH to ETC miners not only have to change the pool address and the wallet, but also prescribe additional parameters in the PhoneixMiner batchcode. In the future ETC developers plan to switch to the Keccak mining algorithm. It’s not the final decision yet, but a test network using this protocol seems to be already running. And in principle, there are good reasons for such a step.

Ethereum Classic survived one 51% attack in January 2019 and several more in the third quarter of 2020. As a result, multimillion-dollar losses from double spending and service downtime accumulated. At that time, major exchanges were ready to delist Ethereum Classic, and some mining pools simply deleted the coin. And after the first attack, there was an idea to switch Ethereum Classic to Keccak-256, which is, in fact, the basis of the Ethash protocol. However, if the intentions are realized classic Ethereum will be available for ASICs, meanwhile the situation is exactly the opposite. ETC can be mined even on three-gigs cards, but it is not available for mining machines mining big Ether and other Ethash coins.

The data was taken from the monitoring service https://bitinfocharts.com. The network hash rate indicators, as well as profitability are not constant, they depend on the value of the coin and the capacity of the “pools” operating equipment.

Which wallet to choose

If you plan to hold cryptocurrency do not spare money to buy a Ledger or Trezor hardware safe. There are cold wallets, which are described above, as well as hot online wallets. Online wallets include MyCrypto, EthereumClassicWallet, MyEtherWallet, Portis, Squarelink, etc.

Where to buy Ethereum Classic cryptocurrency

You can buy the digital currency ETC for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Stablecoin or fiat money on almost any popular exchange. The highest volume of trades on the platforms of

• Binance;
• Bitfinex;
• HitBTC;
• ZBG;
• Coinsbit;
• Kraken;

We recommend using the popular Binance exchange, this platform has multifunctional capabilities. After registration, you will have access to staking, P2P platform, futures, mining pool as well as advanced trading interface.

Available pairs for trading:

• ETC/USDT
• ETC/BTC
• ETC/BUSD
• ETC/USD
• ETC/ETH
• ETC/USDT
• ETC/BNB

The full list of exchanges that trade in Classic is available on Coinmarketcap or Coinecko monitoring service.

You can see transaction status and other information about the network on one of the Ethereum Classic Explorer sites. For example, at https://blockscout.com/etc/mainnet. Blockscout is a resource for checking and analyzing EVM-based blockchains.

Advantages and disadvantages of Ethereum Classic

Advantages of Ethereum Classic:

• Absolute decentralization of the network.
• Open source code.
• Fixed number of coins.
• Support from respected members of the crypto community such as Charles Hoskinson and Gavin Wood.

Disadvantages of ETC cryptocurrency:

• The network is vulnerable to a 51% attack.
• The coin is quite often used for speculative scams like Pump&Dump.
• The number of blockchain engineers actively working on the project is much lower than competitors.

In fact, the Classic is going behind the big Ether. Developers have attempted to converge, as evidenced by the Agharta hardfork. However, the Thanos hardfork, which is clearly a forced measure, is still a step in the opposite direction. Big Ethereum will eventually move to PoS, and Ethereum Classic might just get lost among the obscure second-tier coins if it does not make effective business decisions.

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