Ethereum Classic (ETC) is a cryptocurrency developed and built on the Ethereum blockchain technology. Initially, the two blockchains were identical in every way, until the second hard fork of Ethereum, 1,920,000 blocks ago, was released to refund all the stolen funds in the DAO fund of investors. Transactions on Ethereum remained valid on the Ethereum Classic blockchain until the fork, from which the two blockchains switched to separate operations.
What is the DAO Fund?
The DAO (short for Decentralized Autonomous Organization) is a venture capital fund funded by many investors. The DAO raised $169 million through token sales in its ICO in May 2016. However, about a month later, the DAO fund was hacked and 3.6 million ETH was stolen.
After about three weeks of planning, the Ethereum community decided to perform a hard fork, a hard fork that reversed the transactions and stopped the loss. All stolen ETH was returned to the original owners. However, some argue that the blockchain remained unchanged because the hack was due to problems with the DAO and not any problems with the Ethereum network.
And on July 20, 2016, a group of people in the Ethereum community banded together and declared independence on the network, Ethereum Classic (ETC) officially becoming a rival to Ethereum.
ETC Features
ETC operates through the blockchain using smart contracts with specified conditions that are automatically fulfilled when transactions are made.
Participants in the blockchain network can exchange “Classic Ether” with each other or hold it in their wallets. With Ether, node participants are also rewarded for performing computations while verifying transactions.
The internal mechanism of price-setting transactions – GAS is used to prevent spam in the network and distribute resources in proportion to the incentives provided on demand.
Development Team
The Ethereum Classic project team consists of a group of independent software engineers and software developers working full-time on ETC coin projects. The members of the ETC team are very talented people who are passionate about blockchain. Below are the main members of the Ethereum Classic project management board.
Ethereum Classic Ecosystem
The Ethereum Classic (ETC) ecosystem is a collection of developers, users, businesses, and services organized around the Ethereum Classic blockchain platform. This ecosystem aims to create a decentralized infrastructure for the development and execution of smart contracts and decentralized applications (DApps).
- Developers
A group of developers who build software and applications on the Ethereum Classic platform, including smart contracts, decentralized exchanges, wallets, and other applications.
- Users
Individuals and organizations that use applications and services built on the Ethereum Classic platform.
- Enterprises
Companies that provide products and services based on the Ethereum Classic platform, such as exchanges, wallets, and cloud services.
- Community Initiatives
Community initiatives and projects that focus on promoting and improving the Ethereum Classic ecosystem.
The entire Ethereum Classic ecosystem works together to develop and enhance the platform, creating a healthy and growing decentralized infrastructure. The ecosystem is open source, allowing all members to participate and contribute to the development of the platform.
Storing ETC coins
You can create Ethereum Classic wallets on many different platforms, from online wallets, cold wallets (off-line) to software wallets for computers, mobile wallets and exchange wallets.
Online web wallets: Coinbase is the best choice to store your ETC coins online.
In addition, ClassicEtherWallet is also a good choice, this is the official wallet created by the ETC team itself.
Cold wallets: Ledger Nano S and Trezor are the best hardware or cold wallets to store ETC.
Desktop software wallets: Emerald Wallet, Jaxx.
Mobile wallets: Coinomi and Trust Wallet, these are two very reputable and powerful mobile wallet platforms.
Ethereum vs Ethereum Classic
Ethereum and Ethereum Classic are quite similar when it comes to basic functionality. Most of Ethereum’s core features are also present on Ethereum Classic.
But there are some important differences between ETH and ETC. Most importantly, Ethereum Classic is not compatible with updates to the Ethereum blockchain.
This is especially notable when the Ethereum blockchain completes its upgrade to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism in September 2022. Ethereum Classic retains the proof-of-work system.
In the view of the Ethereum Classic community, the blockchain and source code will always be immutable. It preserves the proof-of-work system before the merge. And that means miners will still be needed to validate ETC transactions.
Proponents of the merge and opponents of Ethereum 2.0 argue that the proof-of-work mechanism is more secure and decentralized than proof-of-stake.
Conclusion
ETC is simply understood as the second version of ETH. Many features of ETC are still similar to ETH, such as the use of smart contracts and decentralized technology. Besides, the technical parameters of ETC are similar to ETH: Average block time, rewards and block size.
