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People have started using dApps on Ethereum Classic (ETC) more over the past few months, with the volume of ETC deposited on the rise.

Data collected by Dapp Direct, a blockchain statistics website, found the amount of ETC locked within the platform was actually increasing. It had doubled from approximately 2,000 ETC in mid-July, to well over 5,500 ETC by September. 5750 ETC had been deposited in the network by press time; worth nearly $67,000 at the current market price.

Ethereum Classic is a platform blockchain used to build decentralized applications or dApps. There are currently seven dApps active on the network, including a messaging service, DEX, and savings fund, as well as a predictions market and a pirate-themed game which uses smart contracts.

Dapp Direct’s operator, Alexander Tsankov, explained to Crypto Briefing that the rising amount of ETC locked in dApps was a promising sign. He said locked-in tokens suggested people were using the network on a daily basis. “The Ethereum Classic community believes that ETC is money in the same way that Bitcoin is,” he said. “A bigger balance is indicative of health.”

Surge in Ethereum Classic dApp development

Ethereum Classic hard-forked from Ethereum in the summer of 2016. The split came after a dispute within the community over whether the blockchain should honor a 6.2m ETH hack. The group who would go on to become the ETC community argued that reversing the hack would compromise the immutability of the blockchain.

Although it had previously kept a low-profile, the Ethereum Classic community was one of the biggest beneficiaries of good news over the summer. Prices spiked whee the crypto exchange Coinbase announced its intention in mid-June to list ETC. The listing helped to give the project much-needed exposure and there has reportedly been a noticeable increase in returning active users as well as newcomers to the network.

Anthony Lusardi, director of the ETC development fund Ethereum Classic Cooperative (ECC), said there had been an increase in the number of projects working to build dApps for the ETC platform. “There’s been a general increase in interest in ETC,” he said. “Some of the biggest dApps being developed and deployed have been in the past few months.”

Speaking over the phone, Lusardi argued that the Coinbase listing had given them the much-needed initial exposure, but that developers had moved onto the project because they were attracted to its immutability, a sort of “perfect record”. Just back from an ETC conference in Seoul, Lusardi said the community’s morale was still high, even with the recent bear market.

Ethereum currently has just shy of 2,000 dApps, with a wide variety of functions, deployed on its platform; Ethereum Classic has seven with the most popular being gambling applications. Lusardi admitted that he thinks the platform has a wider appeal, but that it was a question of time. He said two big projects, so far unnamed, had joined the network in the past couple of months.

Not all projects have been so lucky. Despite a promising launch, the predictions platform Augur (REP), developed on the Ethereum blockchain, has seen a slow decline in everyday users over the past month or so. Although this does not necessarily reflect the dApp’s popularity, it could suggest that the platform is having difficulty expanding its user base.*

Things seem different with ETC. There’s a sense of inevitability in the Ethereum Classic camp. There’s still work to be done but for the community, the belief is mass adoption is not a matter of if; it’s a matter of when.

The author is invested in BTC and ETH, which are mentioned in this article.

*Editor’s note: Commentators including Andrew Macdonald of Crypto Briefing have suggested that current statistical analysis of dApp activity is imperfect; he argues that the Daily Average Users stats for Augur, as an example, exclude all users who have not interacted with the platform because there is no need, once their prediction or market is live.