What is Ethereum Classic?
Ethereum Classic is a hard fork of the Ethereum blockchain. Both Ethereum and Ethereum Classic point to 2015 as their launch moment. What you may not know is that the Ethereum blockchain rebooted in 2016 and reversed some transactions. It was during that time that the infamous DAO hack took place, which caused a split within the Ethereum community.
A small group of people believed that the code should always be sacred and that the blockchain should not be rolled back in case of errors. After all, to what extent can you speak of an immutable transaction history if it is apparently very easy to reverse transactions? At Ethereum Classic, they felt that reversing the trades was not a good idea.
They therefore continued with the original blockchain, hence the name Ethereum Classic. The great Ethereum continued with the adjusted transaction history. There were suddenly two versions of Ethereum. Interestingly, unlike the great Ethereum, Ethereum Classic has a maximum amount of ethers. There will never be more than 210.7 million ETC in circulation.
Rank 19 on CoinMarketCap
Despite the fact that Ethereum Classic is not even allowed to tie the shoelaces of Ethereum in terms of popularity, the project still ranks 19th on CoinMarketCap. With the current price of $41.65, the project still has an impressive market cap of $5.6 billion. While Ethereum Classic is no longer part of the Ethereum network, the project also appears to be benefiting from the approaching Merge.
In the run-up to the Merge, there is again a discussion going on about a possible hard fork of Ethereum. There is a group that would like to keep Ethereum on Proof-of-Work and do everything they can to thwart the move to Proof-of-Stake. This group mainly consists of miners who are afraid that their currently still expensive equipment will soon be worthless. It seems that Chandler Guo, the man who previously was behind the Ethereum Classic hard fork, is still the leading factor now.