By
Chimamanda U. Martha
April 25th, 2024
The actions of Charles Hoskinson have been condemned by both followers of the Ethereum Classic community as well as those of the Ergo protocol.
In an unfriendly turn of events, the Twitter accounts of the Ethereum Classic (ETC) blockchain protocol have been converted to that of the Ergo Community in what comes off as an aftermath of a spat between the Ethereum Classic network and Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson.
The more than 600,000 Twitter followers of the Ethereum Classic account have been automatically converted to those of the Ergo Community. The challenges started when a proposal put forth by Input Output HK, the startup in charge of the Cardano protocol, was rejected by the Ethereum Classic community in 2021.
In September 2021, the @ETCCooperative withdrew support for @InputOutputHK's proposed 20% in-protocol treasury, which led to IOHK withdrawing from the ETC community for the second time. The first time was in December 2018, again after treasury rejected.https://t.co/83YUFYWH6X
— Ethereum Classic (@eth_classic) October 6, 2022
The proposal involved implementing a 20% in-protocol treasury, and with its rejection, the IOHK team pulled its support for the Ethereum Classic protocol. In what seemed like Charles Hoskinson was the creator of the protocol’s Twitter account, the complaints hinge on the fact that he has refused to discuss the transfer or even the sale of the protocol’s account.
With months of stalemate in negotiation, Bob Summerwill, the Executive Director of the ETC Cooperative called Charles out on Twitter with a polite request for him to return the protocol’s Twitter account. In response, Charles said in a tweet:
“Return? It’s my account. As for return, I can’t get back the millions of dollars of development we spent nor the years of time supporting a blockchain that didn’t seem to want to do anything other than preserve a status quo. We’ll call it even”
This disposition does not seem right to Summerwill who later shared in a tweet pointing out that:
“If #EthereumClassic is a dead project then please could you either donate or sell the verified @eth_classic Twitter account (600K followers) to the @ETCCooperative rather than continuing to squat on it and impeding the ETC ecosystem?”
Ethereum Classic Twitter: Erasing 6 Years of Community Building Efforts
By repurposing the Twitter account of the Ethereum Classic protocol, Charles has turned a deaf ear to the more than 6 years of community-building efforts that have been carried out through the account. The account has more than 672,000 followers with total tweets of more than 8,100.
The transition has made the Ergo community more robust, as the new account compliments the firm’s primary account which has just 64.6k followers. The new Ethereum Classic account at the time of writing has just only 509 followers with just about 16 tweets.
Notably, the actions of Charles Hoskinson have been condemned by both followers of the Ethereum Classic community as well as those of the Ergo protocol.
“If this is true, and it seems like it, I want the ETC community to know that we don’t endorse this kind of behaviour,” a Twitter user, The Adalyst said, “Also, as a member of the Ergo community and a holder, I’m extremely sad to learn that the chain’s new Twitter account was essentially a repurposed ETC account.”
It is unclear what will happen in the long run, however, these sorts of mix-ups account for the grey areas that regulations are billed to overhaul.