The DAO Attack that resulted in the Ethereum hard fork may be a preceding event, but its significance continues and will continue to be felt for a long time to come.

The reason is that it’s that attack that led to the split of Ethereum blockchain into two. The newer chain became Ethereum (ETH) while the old chain, those that didn’t favor any changes to the code renamed to Ethereum Classic (ETC).

The two coins didn’t just take different paths, the original chain remained backward incompatible. The implication is that it cannot implement any of the updates and upgrades are done on the ETH platform.

For example, ETH is shifting to a proof of stake algorithm, but ETC will remain a proof of work coin. To compound matters, most of the major figures in the Ethereum community (including Vitalik Buterin and Gavin Wood) moved on to the new chain.

The resulting disagreement over the often quoted ethical and ideological differences meant that there has been some kind of bad blood between the two communities. It doesn’t help to note that ETH has gone on to become the 2nd best cryptocurrency behind Bitcoin in market capitalization. Conversely, ETC is ranked 17th on coinmarketcap.com.

2018 Plans: Ethereum Classic looks to match ETH in Smart Contracts

Vitalik Buterin has put forward a proposal to have ETH supply capped at about 120 million coins. This is in line with the view that an infinite supply may hurt the value of the coin in the future. While this proposal still has to be adopted by the community, it represents an interesting angle to how ETH may shape in terms of value.

Aside from this, it will be interesting to see how Ethereum handles its monetary policy. This takes on an interesting angle as they look to shift from a PoW to PoS.

Even though both Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC) are decentralized platforms that offer smart contracts, ETH is preferred over its older kin. But the ETC team has an elaborate roadmap that is aimed at making it more attractive to developers.

The ETCDEV has several development projects for 2018 as shown on their roadmap. The team is trying to close the gap on ETH and three things constitute their main goals for 2018.

These goals revolve around getting solutions for Scalability through sidechains, integration with the Internet of Things (IoT), and providing a platform for 3rd party developers to create and build their dApps.

One of ETC devs’ main focuses to make the platform scale through sidechains. Though the team acknowledges the challenges ahead, they have expressed confidence in the pilot projects that have been set up with 3rd party companies.

Another short-term goal is to make Ethereum Classic usable with IoT. The ETCDEV indicates that they have made significant progress and that users are able to run a whole stack on the embeddable hardware. To make the Internet of Things a success on the ETC platform, the team has a few components in place. The Emerald wallet, Emerald desktop client, and Sputnik VM have all been worked on in the last three months of 2018.

The Emerald Platform is being revamped and prepared to allow third-party companies to build dApps on the ETC platform.

Ethereum (ETH) vs. Ethereum Classic (ETC): current market

The outlook for both ETH and ETC isn’t great in the short-term. Both coins have endured a torrid time in the market, their value plummeting over the last few weeks.

ETH was valued at $857 against the USD on March 03, 2018 and had a market cap of $84 billion. Today, its price has shrunk to $390 and the market cap stands at $38.4 billion. This drop represents a plunge of over 50% in just a month.

ETC too has had a rough time, and fear is that it may continue to tank until around May. Like ETH it has also dropped more than 50% of its value in March alone.

At the beginning of March, ETC/USD traded at $30.79 and the coin had a market cap of $3.08 billion. But by April 2nd, that has shrunk to $14 and a market cap of $1.4 billion. The market outlook for the two coins is bearish at the moment, though that is the sentiment across the market.

While they may be on a free-fall at the moment, the two projects still present a lucrative chance for investors. However, with its established status and market visibility, I’d say Ethereum (ETH) is undoubtedly a better investment.