In a blog post dated 14 January 2019, Ethereum Classic Labs announced the establishment of a new development team called ETC Labs Core. The team consists of six members whom most have previously worked at ETCDEV, a company that was involved in core development for Ethereum Classis (ETC) but shut down in December 2018 due to the lack of funds.

The announcement followed the detection of unusual mining activities of the cryptocurrency by major crypto exchange Coinbase. The exchange detected reorganizations on ETC’s blockchain and double-spends. The activities were labelled as a 51% attack by the exchange and many others. Although ETC developers denied the allegations, they did ask for all crypto exchanges and mining pools to lengthen confirmation times on withdrawals and deposits involving the currency significantly.

According to the announcement, ETC Labs Core will be focused on core ETC projects, maintaining the ETC blockchain and provide utilities associated with decentralized application development, mining and services.

The Ethereum (ETH) will be undergoing a network upgrade named Constantinople on 16 January 2019. The newly formed development team will reportedly be focusing on reviewing the stated hard fork for the first quarter of 2019. The review will be completed before the finalization of the Ethereum Classic Improvement Proposal 1045, which will be introducing support for ETH’s Byzantium and Constantinople hard forks. After that, the team will be involved in ETC core development such as chain monitoring and data analysing to prevent the repetition of attacks similar to the alleged 51% attack in January.

It is worth noting that the shutting down of ETCDEV back in December 2018 was not peaceful by any means. The head of the development team accused ETC Labs of performing a disguised takeover, poaching the company’s staff members and refusing to distribute essential funds to the company, forcing the company to meet its end. ETC Labs denied ETCDEV’s accusations, claiming that they were not involved in ETCDEV’s management in any major way.