ETC Labs Announces Ethereum Classic Core Development Team

ETC Labs, an Ethereum Classic project incubator, has announced the launch of a new core development team, called ETC Core Labs (Jan 15), in a bid to instigate growth and innovation for the Ethereum Classic (ETC) blockchain ecosystem.

Propelling ETC

ETC Core Labs “will be focused on core Ethereum Classic projects, supporting the ETC blockchain, providing tooling for decentralized application development, mining, and services,” as per project announcement, Jan 15.

The new team composed of Constantine Kryvomaz, Michael Collison, Mike Lubinets, Shane Jonas, Stevan Lohja, and Zachary Belford, among others, has also published its proposed project plan in the same announcement.

ETC Labs Core’s Plans

The team’s plan focuses on six key areas: protocol, EVM, data analytics, DApps, education, and design.

For the ETC protocol, ETC Core Labs plans to review Ethereum’s Constantinople upgrade before finishing the ECIP-1045, which will suggest a subset of Byzantine and Constantinople upgrades. Plans to update the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) to be compatible with ETH to support the Byzantine and Constantinople fork are also in the pipeline.

The team also plans to roll out a data analytics tool for the Ethereum Classic blockchain to avoid another 51 percent attack. The team writes:

“In light of the recent 51% attack on Ethereum Classic, sufficient chain monitoring and chain analysis tooling are an immediate priority and we want to get this tooling available as soon as possible,”.

Furthermore, ETC Core Labs wants to make the development of DApps on the ETC blockchain easier by building an easy to use GUI application for developers to deploy their DApps, as well as a blockchain explorer for DApp development.

Additionally, the team is looking to reduce operational costs related to libraries in order to make the ETC DApp development environment more efficient. Overall, the effort will be complemented by the plan to create an easy-to-use smart contract integrated development environment (IDE), and runtime environment.

ETC Core Labs also wants to increase the number of documents available for developers and plans to provide more guides and tutorials to attract more developers to Ethereum Classic.

Finally, the team aims to conduct thorough UX/UI research to make their DApp tools as user-friendly as possible.

Ethereum Classic is a Survivor

Despite remaining in the shadows of Ethereum since the fork, Ethereum Classic has managed to remain relevant in the cryptocurrency market.

Thanks to the launch of the Ethereum Classic Trust by Grayscale Investments (Apr. 2017) and Coinbase’s support of ETC as an asset on its platform, Ethereum Classic is poised to remain among the top cryptocurrency projects in the coming years.

The Ethereum Classic community has also managed to attract initial coin offerings (ICOs) to its platform, as well as a number of decentralized applications despite the heavy competition from other, newer smart contract computing platforms.

With the formation of the ETC Core Labs team and its proposed roadmap for 2019, it will be interesting to see how the Ethereum Classic ecosystem will evolve in the coming twelve months.