Ethereum (ETH) was the first to introduce smart contracts on the blockchain and has evolved ever since. Now we may soon see the Ethereum blockchain work with its long lost relative, Ethereum Classic.

A Brief History

On July 30, 2015, the Ethereum blockchain went live and helped propel the explosion of Alt-Coins in the crypto market. Ethereum was at one point the most hyped blockchain because of its smart contract feature that allowed new and emerging blockchains and various platforms to launch a security of their coin to help raise capital and utilize the Ethereum blockchain.

Fast forward a year and the price of ETH was rising as The DAO smart contract was launched. If you are not familiar with what The DAO is, you can read up on it here. ETH reached $20 around the time when the DAO developers announced the discovery of a “recursive call vulnerability” or “race to empty” bug on June 16, 2016. During that time while DAO developers were hard at work to fix the problem, an attacker took advantage and started draining the DAO of its ETH. By June 18, over 3.6 Million ETH worth at the time at around $80 Million USD was drained and dropped the price from around $20 to roughly above $11.

Source: CoinGecko

Panic mode kicked in and a heap of proposals was thrown around to find a solution to retrieve the funds. The solution ended up being a hard fork. However, this hard fork would start on a new chain and split from its original chain what became known as Ethereum Classic (ETC).

Ever since the hard fork, the two chains are not compatible with each other. That is until ETC's newest hard fork arrives...

Agharta ETC Hard Fork

ETC Core announced the hard fork will include features from ETH Constantinople fork. Agharta hard fork will have full compatibility with Ethereum according to ETC Labs CEO Terry Culver:

“Ethereum Classic Labs is one of the first incubators to support innovative projects on the Ethereum Classic Blockchain. The compatibility between the ETC network and the ETH network will accelerate development of the Ethereum Classic community and ecosystem.” -Cointelegraph

The hard fork is finalizing and finishing up their testnet reviews. The review period ended on December 19, 2019. If everything goes smoothly, they will proceed with the projected hard fork.

When is the Agharta Hard Fork?

Plans are to activate the hard fork on the ETC mainnet at block 9_573_000. The projected date is around January 15, 2020.

With a few weeks left before the hard fork, anyone running the ETC client should make sure their client is up to date.

Official minimum viable client versions will be announced soon. Classic Geth will reach END OF LIFE on January 15th, 2020. The Agharta hard-fork will be the last hard-fork supported by Classic Geth. If you are a Classic Geth user, then migrate to Besu, Multi-Geth, or Parity now. -ETC Core via Medium

You can listen to the discussion in their ETC Core Dev Call.

One thing to note is Ethereum recently went through their Istanbul hard fork and expected to launch Ethereum 2.0 also known as Serenity, on January 3, 2020. Just about 2 weeks before Ethereum Classic's hard fork. I would guess the Agharta hard fork will still be compatible but we'll have to see in the coming weeks.

We can only speculate on how this hard fork will affect the market for both ETH and ETC but with the two chains being compatible, developers will be able to work with a larger ecosystem that could end up paying off big.

Will this be good for crypto? We'll find out in 2020.

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