What Ethereum Classic is comes down to one decision made during the 2016 DAO crisis. Ethereum Classic (ETC) is a proof-of-work blockchain with EVM-compatible smart contracts. It is the chain that kept its original history after the Ethereum network applied a hard fork to reverse the theft of funds from The DAO. The fork executed at block 1,920,000 on July 20, 2016, and participants who rejected the state change continued the original chain, which became ETC (Ethereum Foundation Blog).
Core technology and architecture
ETC runs an execution layer that tracks Ethereum's EVM in stages. Its Mainnet uses chain ID 61, and its protocol changes are proposed as Ethereum Classic Improvement Proposals (ECIPs). The Spiral upgrade at block 19,250,000 on February 4, 2024 aligned ETC with Ethereum's Shanghai execution-layer changes, including PUSH0 (EIP-3855) (ECIP-1109).
The network moved from Ethash to Etchash, a modified Dagger-Hashimoto, at block 11,700,000 under ECIP-1099. The DAG epoch length doubled from 30,000 to 60,000 blocks, which slows DAG growth so that GPUs can keep mining (ECIP-1099).
Primary use cases
ETC's own materials position the network for smart contract deployment. Hardhat, Foundry, wagmi, viem, and ethers.js are documented to work on ETC without modification once the Olympia upgrade is live. The Mordor testnet (chain ID 63) serves as the development and testing network (ETC Build).
The network also promotes censorship-resistant settlement and a fixed emission schedule as a basis for "sound money" (ETC Sound Money). These are the project's own positions rather than independently measured outcomes.
Who is behind Ethereum Classic and where is it based?
Ethereum Classic has no single founder, central company, or primary development company. Its development is carried out by volunteers and by organizations that have changed over time.
Founders and key figures
- Arvicco: A pseudonym. The ETC blog describes the early community as a small group that set up infrastructure after publishing a manifesto. The real identity and location of Arvicco are not public.
- Igor Artamonov: Founder and CTO of ETCDEV, a development firm that Tracxn lists as founded in 2017 and based in Zug, Switzerland. ETCDEV shut down in December 2018 after financing problems (Coinstelegram).
- James Wo: Founder and CEO of Digital Finance Group (DFG) and founder of ETC Labs, which is now listed as closed.
- Barry Silbert: Founder and CEO of Digital Currency Group (DCG), which funded early ETC Cooperative and Grayscale activity.
- Charles Hoskinson: Listed as CEO of IOHK on the ETC Cooperative's Advisory Council. The sources do not describe him as an ETC founder.
Founding year and project history
The chain dates to the July 2016 DAO fork. The ETC Cooperative was formed as a Delaware LLC on September 7, 2017, and later converted to a non-stock corporation in 2018 (ETC Cooperative 2019 Retrospective).
Country and legal entity
- The ETC Cooperative is a Delaware (US) corporation. Its registered office is not confirmed, since one source lists Wilmington and another a New York address.
- ETCDEV was based in Zug, Switzerland.
- The location of the wider developer community is not publicly documented.
- No primary development company exists. The ETC Cooperative's site states "There is no ETC Foundation (very intentionally)" (ETC Cooperative).
Tokenomics
ECIP-1017 caps supply at 210.7 million ETC. The emission schedule, called 5M20, reduces the block reward by 20% every 5,000,000 blocks (ECIP-1017). A reduction to 1.6384 ETC per block landed at block 25,000,001 in July 2026 (2Miners).
| Metric | Value | |
|---|---|---|
| Total supply | 158,881,565 ETC | |
| Circulating supply | 158,881,565 ETC | |
| Protocol supply cap (ECIP-1017) | 210.7 million ETC | |
| Current block reward | 1.6384 ETC |
The sources do not provide a breakdown of premine, team, or treasury allocations. Issuance declines in each era, and ETC describes its emission model as deflationary (ETC Tokenomics).
Consensus and network security
ETC uses proof-of-work with the Etchash algorithm, and both GPU and ASIC miners participate (ETC Mining). ETC's X account reported about 207 TH/s of hashrate on October 25, 2026, up about 38% from around 150 TH/s on September 1 (ETC on X).
The network has suffered two notable attacks:
- January 2019: A double-spend attack reorganized more than 100 blocks and double-spent about $1.1 million of ETC (Cointelegraph).
- August 2020: Coinbase reported two attacks, the first involving about 800,000 ETC (about $5.8 million) and the second about 460,000 ETC (about $3.2 million) (Coinbase).
A July 2026 Springer Nature paper notes that ETC is more vulnerable than Bitcoin because its network is smaller (Springer Nature). ECIP-1094 proposes VeriBlock Proof-of-Proof as a Bitcoin-anchored defense, while the checkpointing proposal ECIP-1097 is marked withdrawn (ECIP-1094).
Partnerships and ecosystem integrations
The ETC partner directory lists Coinbase, Kraken, and Blockscout among its entries, and Blockscout is the listed explorer for both Mainnet and Mordor (ETC Partners). NiceHash removed Etchash support after the ECIP-1099 upgrade, which limits short-term hashrate rentals (ETC Blog).
Olympia's client plan includes plugins for Besu, Erigon, Ethrex, Go-Ethereum, Nethermind, and Reth. These integrations are planned and not yet confirmed as live (OlympiaDAO Clients).
Competitive advantages and value proposition
The project describes ETC as the largest proof-of-work smart contract platform, a claim made on its own website (ETC Mining). Its main positions are:
- Proof-of-work security combined with EVM tooling
- A fixed supply cap and a declining emission schedule
- Immutability and the continuous historical record of the original Ethereum chain
The Olympia design would keep the base fee rather than burn it and direct it to a protocol-owned treasury (OlympiaDAO).
Development activity and roadmap
Olympia combines Glamsterdam EVM alignment, an EIP-1559 fee market, and a protocol-governed treasury in a single activation (Olympia Treasury). Its draft ECIPs 1111 to 1114 opened for community review on July 4, 2025 (ETC Blog). The Gorgoroth Trials, launched in February 2026, tested compatibility across Fukuii, Core-Geth, and Besu (ETC News). Mainnet activation is targeted for 2027, but no activation block has been set (OlympiaDAO).
Core-Geth v1.13.0 was published on September 14, 2026. It fixes six CVEs and moves the client to Go 1.26 (Core-Geth FAQ). Core-Geth is in maintenance mode, and the ETC Cooperative is scheduled to dissolve by the end of 2026, so the client's long-term maintenance path is still open. Fukuii, an ETC-native execution client written in Scala 3 under the Apache 2.0 license, is described by OlympiaDAO as the primary client for the Olympia era (Fukuii Documentation).