Cons and Pros of Ethereum Classic

By Prashant Jha

If you have read our beginner’s guide to Ethereum Classic or have kept abreast of the updates from the crypto market over the last few years, you would know that Ethereum Classic was created as a result of an Ethereum hard fork.

When a security breach raised questions about the viability of the network, a large section of the Ethereum community sought to erase the record of that security breach forever. That attempt of erasure took the shape of a hard fork.

Now, what this hard fork did was it created a new chain of blocks from a point where the security breach had not happened. This was quite literally, an effort to wipe out a small part of the community or Ethereum network’s history.

Even though the majority of the original Ethereum developers and community members decided to go with the forked version, which did not have the security breach record, a small section protested.

The view of these few developers was that the attempt to negate and erase history was wrong. In their opinion, it was wrong simply because it went against the basic goal of Immutability blockchain technology is usually built around. Immutability refers to the fact that no information is supposed to be rubbed off or removed from a blockchain network without affecting all other blocks. However, the Ethereum hard fork went against this very principle.

Therefore, these few protesting developers stayed with the original chain, that still has a record of the security breach having happened and called themselves the Ethereum Classic community.

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In this article, we will take a quick look at what the pros and cons of Ethereum Classic (ETC) are.

Pros of Ethereum Classic

1. True to the Founding Principles of Blockchain: Immutability

Ethereum Classic sticks to the original vision underlying the very premise of blockchain.

Ethereum Classic holds the view that no matter the situation, an attempt to deny the history of a chain is a problematic way to break from what constitutes a principal characteristic of any ideal blockchain network: immutability.

2. Highly Decentralized, With Low-Profile Developers

In case of a network like Ethereum, we see leading developers connected to the network always making headlines. Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin is a major crypto influencer and a young genius known to make frequent news in the cryptosphere. Although having such notable faces does boost the credibility of a cryptocurrency, having a low-key developer team helps promote its decentralization.

The team behind ETC are not all too hyped up. Instead, they prefer to remain behind the scenes, and as a result, do not end up raising concerns about centralization in the network.

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Cons of Ethereum Classic

1. ETC cannot Use Ethereum Updates Post-Fork

Given that the Ethereum network is backed by a thriving community of enthusiastic blockchain developers, anyone would like to have a share of its novel upgrades. However, since the fork, it seems that Ethereum Classic is not in a position to incorporate the Ethereum upgrades in its own chain.

The inability to make use of stellar and novel upgrades made to the new Ethereum network poses a substantial challenge for Ethereum Classic.

2. Lack of Popularity

Despite its lofty claims of being driven to achieve blockchain’s original aim, Ethereum Classic continues to be less popular than Ethereum. While Ethereum flourishes and thrives, running more and more fresh smart contracts and dApps, Ethereum Classic continues to remain in the shadow of Ethereum.

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Prashant Jha

As a content writer Prashant believes in presenting complex topics in simple laymen terms. He is a tech enthusiast and an avid reader.

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