Recently influenced by the impending merger of Ethereum, Ether Classic (ETC), known as "Doomsday chariot", began to surge.
The ETC topped $45 today, up 260.58% in just over a month from its June 19 low of $12.48. ETC has also become a rare hot spot in the cryptocurrency bear market.
According to market analysis, the reason for the rise is that ETC can undertake the computing power, some users and even ecology after ETH merger to a large extent. Mining machine maker Bitmain recently announced that it will invest $10 million to support ETC eco-development.
A large number of Ethereum Pow miners were converted to ETC mining
The Ethereum 2.0 upgrade, which will transition the network from PoW to PoS consensus, will have an impact on all aspects of the Ethereum ecosystem, Ethereum developers said on a conference call on September 19th.
As Ethereum transitions from the Pow algorithm to the PoS algorithm, the market expects a large number of Pow miners to sit idle. In 2016, Vitalik Buterin led the hard fork of ETH from the ETC chain. There have been many similarities between the two chains in terms of network design and compatibility, so miners are most likely to switch ETH miners to ETC.
According to 2Miners' data, the current ETC network computing power is 29.87TH/s, up 28.98% in 24 hours.
Lu Lei, CEO of ANTPOOL, a subsidiary of BitMain, also revealed at the Regional Digital Mining Summit (WDMS) held in Miami on July 27 that ANTPOOL has invested up to US $10 million to support the development and exploration of ecological applications for the ETC main network to promote the overall performance improvement of the ETC network.
Lu Lei said that ANTPOOL will invest more funds in the future, and jointly participate in the construction of Ether Classic (ETC) ecology and incubate ETC ecological excellent projects with industry investors and developers.
"Bitmain is just trying to sell more mining machines." Miner Blooming Jie (pseudonym) points out that BitMain supported the split of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) from Bitcoin, because forking a coin miner creates a new profit growth point.
According to the data of Oco cloud chain, the current computing power of the whole network of Ethereum is about 900TH/s. According to the computing power of 30MH/s of each graphics card mining machine, there are more than 30 million graphics cards on the Ethereum chain to participate in computing power mining. By this reckoning, Ethereum Pow mining is a billion-dollar market.
Blooming Jie pointed out to the blockchain daily reporter analysis, Ethereum to Pos algorithm, the previous Pow algorithm mining machine had to find a new way out. Bitmain and Mototech are the main manufacturers of Ethereum ASIC mining machines. Currently, Mototech has transformed into a traditional GPU. Therefore, Bitmain must also take up the banner of supporting ETC development for its own mining machines.
"The hope is that more people will pay attention to ETC." After all, when ETC prices go up, miners have the incentive to dig, so ETC prices have been pulled down by two times from the bottom recently, said Kai.
However, some miners believe that ETC is not enough to support the $100 billion Ethereum mining community, and there is no need or possibility for ETC to develop an ecosystem.
Miner Xiao Bei (pseudonym) analyzed to the reporter of Blockchain Daily that at present, the Aether classic is still relatively small, and it is not enough to undertake the idle Pow mining machine of Ethereum after switching to Pos algorithm. At the same time, ETC taking the Pow route is still facing various problems existing in Ethereum in the past, so turning to mining ETC is not a long-term solution.
Xiaobei revealed that some miners are also preparing to fork the ETH network and continue to retain Pow mining.
Ethereum and Ethereum classic past and present lives
The original Ethereum blockchain was created in 2015 by a group of programmers such as Vitalik Buterin to develop a new blockchain network based on the Bitcoin network's lack of smart contracts.
Due to the security flaw in the DAO in the new network, it was exploited by multiple hackers in June 2016. The hacking drained the DAO project of $50 million worth of ether,
Most of the Ethereum user community has concluded that the best way to fix the vulnerability and avoid similar vulnerabilities in the future is to hard fork the blockchain into a new version and return the lost funds to the wallets of affected users.
After the fork was completed, the new blockchain was called Ethereum, and its cryptocurrency was assigned the code ETH.
Users opposed to the fork remain on the platform originally known as Ethereum Classic, with the crypto code ETC.
The two networks share common origins and some technical parameters, specifically: both blockchains are currently based on a proof-of-work (Pow) out of block verification method. However, Ethereum already runs a proof-of-stake (Pos) network alongside the POW-based platform.
Although there is a long history between Ethereum and Ethereum Classic, there are also significant differences between them, such as: security profile, network activities, some technical parameters and market performance.
Ethereum Classic adopts the motto "Code of Law," emphasizing imtamability as a core principle of blockchain. Instead, Ethereum sees modifications like forks as possible solutions to critical bug problems or improved features. In general, the ethos of Ethereum allows for a more flexible approach to platform development, and Ethereum is relatively centralised, with one central figure - Vitalik Buterin.
Vitalik Buterin has led Ethereum's shift to Pos verification, with broad support from the stakeholder community. And any such radical change to the Ethereum Canon is highly unlikely.
However, the decentralized ETC is often subjected to serious large-scale hacking attacks. In August 2020 alone, the ETC network was attacked no less than three times by 51% hackers. The network's security profile became so compromised that some exchanges removed ETC from their list of supported cryptocurrencies.
Why should we invest $10 million to support ETC network? A reporter from Blockchain Daily sent an interview request to BitMain. As of press release, we have not received a response.