Former Ethereum Developer, Bob Summerwill Joins ETC Cooperative as Executive Director

By Swati Kishore

Former Ethereum Core Developer, Bob Summerwill is joining the Ethereum Classic Cooperative (ETC) as the Executive Director.

A non-profit organization, the Ethereum Classic Cooperative was established in April 2017 with a mission to support the development of the Ethereum Classic protocol.

Summerwill is a veteran Ethereum developer who has previously worked with the Ethereum Foundation and the Blockchain software technology company, Consensys.

Even though one would think that his wide experience with Ethereum will make him biased towards the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency, however, Summerwill believes that the nascent Blockchain Technology as a whole holds a lot of potentials. He said,

“Something I’ve been talking about a lot through 2018 is this call to an end for tribalism. If you look at the whole of blockchain, it’s still a tiny thing compared to existing centralized technology bases, but you’ve got so much factionalism within blockchain where we’re really not being as effective as we could be.”

Summerwill is joining ETC with a goal to foster a productive conversation within the Ethereum Classic realm and subsequently communicate the roadmaps and plans to the vested community.

He believes that ever since its launch in 2016, Ethereum Classic has been misunderstood by the external public. Summerwill elaborated,

“The external perception has really been, ‘Well, here’s a group of zealot-y rebels who parted company with the rest of the ethereum community and are just sore, sick and grumbling in the corner.’ The reality is there is interesting technical work happening on the classic side which I see as being additive to what’s happening in the rest of the ecosystem.”

Summerwill is of the view that the ETC community responded well to the recent 51% attacks on the network and he supports the suggestion to increase confirmation wait times which was made by the US Director of Ethereum Classic Cooperative, Anthony Lusardi. Summerwill explained,

“Your [ETC] funds are as safe as your private keys are and really the answer is just wait longer for the confirmations. The finality on the proof of work chains is statistical finality. It’s not absolute finality … So I think it’s exchanges that are the entities that are really at need of looking at their practices.”