Crazy Train ETC: Thrilling Journey to Hell and Heaven

Original title: Is ETC a "Lost Madman" or a "Renaissance"?

When you mention ETC (Ethereum Classic), what comes to your mind?

Some people praised it, thinking that it is a strong proof of sticking to the blockchain spirit; some people sneered at it, thinking that it is a remnant of the previous dynasty that should have been eliminated long ago.

Repeated double-spending attacks, ECC (Ethereum Classic Collective) board infighting, and recent market value breakthroughs to record highs... These topic-filled events have made ETC appear in the public's sight time and time again. After shocking all the judges, controversies came one after another at the same time.

Today, please follow my perspective, review the development process of ETC, think about the development dilemma and potential breakthrough points of ETC, and then start thinking about "Fork" in the blockchain world.

For ETC investors and participants in the Ethereum Classic ecology, it is difficult to find a completely suitable vocabulary to describe the recent days, and it is not appropriate to describe it with "mixed joys and sorrows" or "no luck". Under the influence of many news, the market value of ETC has fluctuated greatly recently. For relevant investors, it can be called a thrilling journey of "hell and heaven".

The first round of the \"Crazy 72 Hours\" event in the Giant Whale Coin Market ended successfully: According to official news, on May 23, Singapore time, the first round of the \"Crazy 72 Hours\" event in the Giant Whale Coin Market ended successfully. According to the official news of the giant whale, the whole process of this round of activities took only 1 second 43.

This \"Crazy 72 Hours\" event is launched by the giant whale official to welcome the opening of the "Whale Leap Project-Contract Competition" in the giant whale currency market, and it is launched for users who have not yet subscribed to BL in the first round of "Crazy 72 Hours" event Give back activities.

BL is the token of the giant whale trading platform, which is applied to the giant whale ecosystem. Users who hold BL can enjoy multiple rights and interests in the giant whale exchange. [2020/5/24]

Next, we review the recent popular events related to ETC respectively:

Double-spend attack, also known as 51% attack, is a common challenge faced by almost all public chains using PoW consensus algorithm.

The realization of the double-spending attack requires the attacker to master more than half or nearly half of the computing power resources of the blockchain network. The specific implementation method is that the attacker tampers with the blockchain network through a large amount of computing power resources he has mastered.

Voice | Leo Wang, Founding Partner of PreAngel: The madness of last year was abnormal: At the 2018 Global Media Blockchain Summit, Leo Wang, the founding partner of PreAngel, gave a keynote speech on "How the Token Economy Has Changed Angel Investment" . He said that we are currently experiencing the winter of the blockchain, and as a value investor, the mood is calmer, because this is when the blockchain returns to rationality, and the madness of last year was abnormal. [2018/8/14]

Since the PoW public chain has a great demand for computing power resources, a mature and stable public chain can often attract a large amount of computing power resources to serve it. At this time, the public chain that uses the same or similar algorithm as the public chain will become a potential vulnerable target.

Due to the high similarity in core algorithms between ETC and ETH, ETC has become the most frequently attacked large public chain. At the beginning of its establishment, ETC suffered a large number of double-spending attacks every month, and the rights and interests of miners and currency holders were greatly challenged. Even in recent days, double spending incidents still occur in ETC from time to time.

ECC, the full name of Ethereum Classic Collective, is a non-profit organization dedicated to maintaining and promoting the development of ETC by receiving and managing funds provided by Grayscale's Ethereum Classic Trust Fund. During the development of ETC, ECC has provided assistance in many aspects.

John McAfee, behind the crazy recommendation of altcoins, claimed that his Twitter account was hacked: Previously, John McAfee’s personal Twitter had frequently promoted some little-known cryptocurrencies. After seeing this information, many investors Just buy the cryptocurrency it recommends. However, in the early hours of this morning, the network security pioneer revealed to the BBC that his Twitter account had been hacked. He said: "I cannot control the security of Twitter." [2017/12/29]

ECC's board of directors consists of three board members, namely James Wo (founder of ETC Labs), Barry silbert (CEO of Digital Currency Group) and Cody Burns (manager of Accenture blockchain architecture). The protagonists of the infighting are the aforementioned James Wo and ECC Executive Director Bob Summerwill.

In his public statement, James Wo directly blamed Bob Summerwill for his numerous leadership and management issues, and the ensuing "ECC's lack of transparency in terms of budget, operations, and projects." Although James Wo emphasized in his follow-up statement that he would not leave ETC, the incident still reflected the problems in the operation of ECC, a non-profit organization in the ETC ecosystem, which increased the uncertainty of ETC's future development.

Venezuela's crazy crackdown on Bitcoin miners requires all mines to register: It is expected that before December 22, the Venezuelan government will require Bitcoin miners to register. "We need to know who the miners are, where they are and what kind of mining equipment they are using," Carlos Vargas, who was recently named Venezuela's head of cryptocurrencies, said on Tuesday. At the same time, the Venezuelan police continued to crack down on miners, seized mining equipment, and arrested miners on charges of money laundering, illegal bribery, computer crimes, financing terrorism, and sabotaging the national power system. [2017/12/15]

After entering 2021, the currency price of ETC has entered a sprint state of continuous rise. From 5.6 US dollars at the beginning of the year, it has risen all the way to break through the 100-dollar mark, and briefly reached an all-time high of 180 US dollars (Huobi price) on May 6. As of the writing of this article, its total market capitalization firmly occupies the top 20 encrypted projects.

In less than half a year, the more than 30-fold increase has driven many investors crazy, and some long-standing believers have also gained a lot of money. Regarding the future of ETC, investors have also begun to have new thinking and expectations.

Speaking of ETC, ETH must be mentioned. Although there is a certain degree of difference between the two, at the beginning, the two originated from the same public chain. It was a hacking event called "TheDAO Funds Stolen", which caused huge differences among the original Ethereum ecological participants, and finally divided into ETC and ETH, which are "same origin".

The CEO of the Japanese trading platform believes that the conservative Japanese are particularly crazy about Bitcoin investment: according to the New York Times, Yuzo Kano, CEO of bitFlyer, the world's largest bitcoin trading platform, said not long ago that the Japanese Investment philosophy has always been conservative, but once they are touched, they will bet all in, especially in Bitcoin investment. [2017/12/11]

In June 2016, tens of millions of ETH assets in the decentralized autonomous project "TheDAO" were attacked and successfully acquired by hackers. As one of the largest blockchain projects at that time, most participants in the Ethereum ecosystem were affected by this attack. It also includes a group of core Ethereum developers such as Vitalik Buterin.

As a result, one of the biggest debates since the creation of Ethereum was launched in the community. Most members, including V God, hope to upgrade through a hard fork to recover stolen funds and eventually retain the Ethereum name. Some members who are obsessed with maintaining the original chain admitted the theft and developed independently under the name of Ethereum Classic.

ETC is both the original chain and an abandoned "failed version". The new fork, supported by many core members of the ecosystem, continues to explore the encrypted world by virtue of its strong continuous innovation, and maintains its status as the king of the public chain in the encrypted world.

Comparing the two at this stage, ETC and ETH have a large number of similar basic frameworks and designs, but the ecological richness is too different.

If we analyze which of the two is more successful, judging from the current results, there is no doubt that ETH is the successful answer. Its ecological development, value accumulation, global influence and financial thickness are unparalleled.

But from another perspective, ETC retains many classic settings of Ethereum, which is a good embodiment of the blockchain spirit.

There are infinite possibilities in the future, maybe only time can tell who is on the right path.

All along, ETC has lived in the shadow of ETH. Although it retains the same infrastructure as ETH, due to the transfer of core developers within the ecosystem, ETC has lost the most important continuous innovation capability in public chain competition.

At the same time, due to the good development of ETH, a large amount of computing resources are focused on the Ethereum network. Due to the high overlap of the two core algorithms, the majestic computing power of ETH has become a "sharp sword" hanging over ETC's head, which may pose a major threat to ETC's network security at any time. The biggest cause of double spend attacks.

"Everyone knows ETH, but few people know ETC."

So, how should ETC get out of its own future?

The first case is waiting for the PoS conversion of ETH. Due to the current ETH chain congestion and high miner fees, the core development team has made a plan to switch to the PoS consensus mechanism. At that time, with the change of the consensus mechanism, the interests of miners will be affected, and ETC will have a good chance to receive these computing power, and the subsequent market attention and capital accumulation will have the opportunity to promote the transformation of ETC.

In another case, it is necessary to rely on ETC's own development force, and make some differences in the focus of ecological development from ETH.

In my opinion, it is very important to create a difference with ETH. But if you do not seek change, but blindly imitate, it is not without development. Refer to BSC (Binance Smart Chain) and Heco (Huobi Ecological Chain), these recently popular public chains, although there is not much innovation in technology, but with almost the same infrastructure as ETH, it can still attract a lot of investment and ecological participants. But in this way, ETC will always become the "subsidiary" of ETH, and there is almost no chance of surpassing it.

"Fork" translates as "fork", which refers to the differentiated upgrade of the old version due to different development ideas during the development of open source projects.

In recent years, with the development of Github and the spirit of blockchain, the meaning and scope of application of Fork have become more and more abundant, followed by controversy about Fork.

Some people think that fork is the best proof of the blockchain spirit and the best way to choose the right path. When a dispute arises in an organization, anyone can implement it according to their own ideas, and the market will eventually choose the correct path.

Another group of people think that fork is often a betrayal and blood-sucking of the project, and the effect is often negative. Fork has many usage scenarios in a broad sense, and in the context of blockchain, it often represents the split of a public chain consensus and development, or the copying and pasting of a new project to an old project. It is not difficult for us to see the turmoil of many projects after the fork, as well as the division of the original community.

Thinking from an objective standpoint, Fork has more advantages than disadvantages for the development of the blockchain. With the existence of Fork, no organization or individual with the right to speak can fully control the community; with the existence of Fork, the development of the project is not only subject to external competitive pressure, but also driven by internal innovation, which is more conducive to the development of the project.

To this day, opinions on ETC remain a very contentious part of the blockchain world. As one of the most valuable Fork cases, perhaps only time will tell us the final answer.

Tags：

Huobi Exchange