The Ethereum Foundation will support the updated version of Ethereum, at the same time not hindering the development of Ethereum Classic alternative chain, the ecosystem’s founder says.

The foundation implemented the hard fork to return the funds withdrawn from The DAO and will stick to this decision, Buterin points out in his official statement.

“We will focus our resources and attention on the chain which is now called ETH.”

At the same time, the Ethereum Foundation recognises the right of the system users to disagree with the hard fork and switch to the alternative chain, which is the initial Ethereum ecosystem blockchain.

“We recognize that the Ethereum code can be used to instantiate other blockchains with the same consensus rules, including testnets, consortium and private chains, clones and spinoffs, and have never been opposed to such instantiations.”

Still, Ethereum Foundation calls on its clients using protocols developed both by its team and third parties (e.g. Parity) to choose the updated ETH version.

Those users who prefer to stay with the initial Ethereum version that did not pass the hard fork should use a splitter contract at the address provided by Buterin. Thus, they will be able to transfer their ETC tokens to a new separate account and avoid the risk of subsequent attack.

“We also encourage the ETC community to consider adopting a secondary hard fork to change transaction formats to make further replay attacks impossible.”

Before all these steps are taken and ETH and ETC are split, both chains should be managed through separate wallets.

Buterin’s statement is, in fact, a technical description of how both Ethereum blockchain versions can survive. It is important that the Ethereum Foundation made clear its position regarding Ethereum Classic, which came out of the bubble and is gaining popularity: they will neither support the chain nor stand in its way.

The statement sparked discussions on Reddit showing both support and disapproval of the foundation’s position. Some even tried to find hidden meaning in Buterin’s words.

“Vitalik says they're supporting ETH because the community seems to support it now. So if ETC becomes the dominant chain, this implies that it will have Vitalik's support,” one user suggests.

There are also questions as to who will develop ETC updates, is it necessary to find new protocol core developers and is it safe to allow new people to work with the code.

Meanwhile, the ETC’s popularity carries on growing. As of Wednesday morning, the cost of Ethereum altcoin has rocketed by 1.5 times over 24 hours and reached 0.0031 BTC. However, the cryptocoin still has not reached its parity level with ETH after the previous fall.

On the contrary, the quotes for ETH continue to decline: the token fell by almost 10% to lower than 0.02 BTC, according to the largest Ethereum exchange, Poloniex.

Interestingly, ETC trade surpassed ETH on the largest Ethereum exchange: ETC daily trade volume exceeded 163,545 BTC ($106.3 mln).

Such ETC popularity did not come unnoticed by cryptocurrency exchanges and mining pools. On 26 July, MinerGate mining company announced the start of ETC trade. Today the support for ETC was announced by one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges Kraken, as well as Bittrex.

Elena Platonova