Ethereum Classic Removed Difficulty Bomb

Developers of Ethereum Classic has announced  the successfully conducted network upgrade at block 5,900,000 thanks to which it has become possible to remove  its “difficulty bomb.”

Currently, it is difficult to define an exact number of upgraded nodes. Nevertheless, according to the developers that took part in the project, the majority of nodes and mining pools have reported about their upgrading long before the time of the planned hard fork came.

No bugs or negative consequences have been discovered immediately after the fork. Moreover, it is expected that the fork will reduce the time needed for creation of a block. As a result, the distance, technical as well as ideological, between Еthereum and Ethereum Classic blockchains will become even more noticeable.

The first talks about this possible fork took place two years ago, in 2016. While Ethereum community felt more like staying committed to transitioning to a proof-of-stake consensus system, the ethereum classic community chose not to stop working  using proof-of-work, as the members  of the second community consider that numerous ways to reach consensus over block validation resist centralization better than any other method.

Let us also remind that this difference in opinions and division of the initial Ethereum community into two groups following their ideas about consensus algorithm became a reason of the first Ethereum fork and appearance of Ethereum Classic.

Those miners, who wanted to stay true to proof-of-work though it was much more energy consuming than a newly proposed proof-of-stake system, formed the Ethereum Classic community . The supporters of the older version believed that staying with proof-of-work  they showed their commitment to blockchain and readiness to invest into mining equipment.

Nevertheless, it was obvious that utilizing of Ethereum principles may pose a thread to Ethereum Classic blockchain and  result into a strong necessity to use a hybrid algorithm sooner or later. In order not to give up and switch to hybrid algorithms, it was obligatory to conduct another hard fork that would be able to prevent explosion of the so-called “difficulty bomb”. And as we have already mentioned it took place at block 5,900,000.

It is worth noting that one researcher of FECAP University has calculated the cost of a 51% attack on Ethereum Classic blockchain. The results are quite surprising. It could take just $55 mln to hack a major cryptocurrency network. But it may bring a huge amount up to $1 bln.  These studies just demonstrate the hackability of cryptocurrency networks that use proof-of-work algorithms.

At the press time, according to CoinMarketCap, having lost over 3% of its value during the recent 24-hour period, Ethereum is traded at $550,87. With a market capitalization of a little bit less than %55 bln, it remains the second largest cryptocurrency in the world. Meanwhile, Ethereum Classic with its market cap of $1,5 bln is traded at $15,03 as informed by CoinMarketCap.