ETC Review | Ultimate Money's guide to Ethereum Classic

Ethereum Classic Review: Beginners guide

Ethereum Classic (ETC) : A dApp platform for the Internet Of Things

Industry type: Decentralised applications (dApps).

What is Ethereum Classic?

In 2016, a venture capital fund based on the Ethereum network called the Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO) raised $168 million dollars for investing in smart contract projects. The DAO was hacked due to a vulnerability in the network, $50 million dollars was stolen, and the Ethereum team decided to split the blockchain (hard fork) to render the stolen assets worthless and reimburse the victims. Members of the Ethereum community rebelled against this authoritative motion to move Ethereum onto a new chain as it compromised its promise of decentralisation and immutability. The community that rebelled continued to use and develop the original chain that was meant to die off, and so Ethereum classic (ETC) was born.

What gives it value?

It has a capped supply of 230 million tokens. All coins will be in circulation by the year 2025.
It has all of the services and advantages of Ethereum.
Its community is faithful to the original decentralised values and the motto that ‘code is the law.

Interesting Technology:

The Sputnik virtual machine is an upgrade to the original Ethereum virtual machine. It is built for the Internet Of Things and has the flexibility to operate with other blockchains.
Sidechains are independent blockchains that are pegged to and can work with their parent blockchain. Blockchains that are pegged together become more flexible as they can communicate with each other and share their own unique features whilst remaining independent in the event of a hack. Sidechaining is also a promising solution to scalability issues as traffic can be shared and diverted.
Although Ethereum is moving to a proof of stake (POS) protocol to build its blockchain, Ethereum Classic will continue to use and develop the proof of work (POW) protocol. It is debated that POS is more efficient than POW. However, Ethereum Classic developers insist that the POW can be made more efficient through further development and is the best way to retain decentralisation.

Notable team:

Igor Artamonov is a tech entrepreneur and software developer who is the founder and CTO of the Ethereum Classic development team. Artamonov was originally against the DAO as he knew it was vulnerable, he was also against the Ethereum hard fork as it would centralise the process. Since the hard fork, Artamonov has been working on ETC to pursue its original intentions.
Charles Hoskinson is the CEO of IOHK and a well-known developer in the crypto community who also worked with Vitalik Buterin on Ethereum. Hoskinson now works on Ethereum classic to uphold security, consistency and immutability to create a network built on a stable foundation that is cultivated for the Internet Of Things.

Notable partnerships:

The Callisto network (CLO) will be Ethereum Classic’s first side chain development that will focus on a smart contract auditing system to benefit the dApp services of both chains.
Grayscale Investments have created an Ethereum Classic investment trust that enables investors to expose themselves to the price movement of Ethereum Classic through a traditional investment vehicle.
Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK) is a blockchain and cryptocurrency engineering company that is helping to develop the Ethereum classic network. IOHK is also working on the well known Cardano (ADA) network
Coinbase, one of the most popular and well trusted exchanges has decided to list Ethereum Classic as one of its 5 available cryptocurrencies.

Review: The Good

It no longer bases its identity in protest against Ethereum, on the contrary, it has developed its own identity and is pursuing its goals with a clear vision.
It will never violate its principles of decentralisation and the ‘code is law.’ This ethos is deeply rooted in the ETC community and its very identity. With such conviction comes a sense of trust and commitment.
It is being developed for the Internet Of Things and the 4th industrial revolution where many devices that individuals and businesses interact with on a daily basis are interconnected and communicate via the internet.
Its sidechaining solutions to scalability are promising preventative developments that may see it solve one of the biggest problems in cryptocurrency today.
It shares a friendly allegiance with Cardano, another popular dApp platform that is in development and designed to serve the future of blockchain technology. Such allegiances and market sharing behaviours rather than market domination may help it to flourish in a future market that will be more diversified than the present day.

Review: The Not So Good

It doesn’t currently have the reputation of Ethereum to attract investors and developers.
It has yet to secure prominent working decentralised applications that give its network use-value.
Many people still believe it exists purely as a protest to Ethereum in the hard fork event of 2016.
It has a lot of competing for dApp platforms which may threaten to overshadow it if it doesn’t gain strong momentum.

Future Roadmap:

2018: Improved caching for faster performance.
2019: Scalability improvements through sharding, towards 1000 transactions per second.
2020: Hybrid consensus research and mesh networks.

CONCLUSION:

In my opinion, Ethereum Classic didn’t have much going for it when it was simply a rebellion against the hard fork of 2016. Now that time has passed, it has begun to carve its own definitive path that stays true to the original decentralised and immutable ethos that Ethereum originally promised. With the addition of its capped supply of 230 million tokens whilst supplying all of the benefits of Ethereum, Ethereum Classic has been nicknamed ‘the Bitcoin of decentralised applications.’ However, it needs a large number of promising applications to adopt its network to gain the traction needed to excel, and if unable to do this, then it may be overshadowed by an increasingly competitive market.

Ethereum Classic Price:

The current Ethereum Classic, market cap and charts.

Local exchanges:

Coinspot: www.coinspot.com.au

Cointree: www.cointree.com

Overseas exchanges:

CoinBase: www.coinbase.com

Binance: www.binance.com

Bitfinex: www.bitfinex.com

Kraken: www.kraken.com

Changelly: https://changelly.com/

Where to store this crypto: