With the success of the Ethereum (available on Coinbase) Classic fork, what’s next for ETC?

Ethereum (available on Coinbase) Classic Fork: What Happened?

The Ethereum (available on Coinbase) Classic fork was completed to diffuse the so-called “difficulty bomb” that was coded into the Ethereum (available on Coinbase) code. This code basically causes Ethereum (available on Coinbase) mining to become more difficult once it switches to its new consensus algorithm.

The fork was necessary for a couple of reasons. First, the difficulty bomb would have made Ethereum (available on Coinbase) Classic mining unprofitable – which is certainly less than ideal for ETC miners. But ultimately, it also came down to a friction in ideology.

Ethereum (available on Coinbase) is moving to proof-of-stake, which is what would have caused the difficulty code in the first place. The Ethereum (available on Coinbase) community is made up of members who believe that proof-of-stake is the best route, partly because it is a consensus algorithm that is more energy efficient.

On the other side of the argument are the people who prefer a proof-of-work consensus algorithm, which are the community backers for Ethereum (available on Coinbase) Classic. Proof-of-work, they say, is a more decentralized way of achieving consensus. Proof-of-work also requires miners to invest in the mining hardware continually, which means they’re investing in the blockchain.

Whichever side may be right, the Ethereum (available on Coinbase) Classic fork marks its complete separation from the Ethereum (available on Coinbase) code.

The fork appears successful as of right now. There haven’t been any bugs reported yet, which is a good sign. The main goal was to lower the block production times, which seems to be happening so far:

We did it! 99% of the mining hashrate upgraded successfully.
Blocktimes getting faster; down from 22 seconds to 14 seconds.
Hashrate going up 5 TH/s -> 8 TH/s; making the network more secure. https://t.co/vYuyzgVQ10
— ETC Cooperative (@ETCCooperative) May 30, 2018