



Ether Wars?

As I stated in a previous post there was some shock and surprise at the success of Ethereum Classic (ETC) the original blockchain version of Ethereum following the recent Hard Fork.

This culminated with the recent addition of ETC with record levels of trade volume for a new addition on the Poloniex Exchange.

Now it seems things are hotting up even further in what have been termed the Ether Wars.

Shots Fired

On Sunday a well known figure in the Chinese ethereum community called Chandler Guo announced that he would take action against Poloniex for listing ETC by launching a 51% attack (using 98GH which was triple the hashrate for ETC at the time).

Obviously it hasn't worked as intended. As an experiment I have been mining Ethereum Classic without issues and my wallet has remained in synch. Indeed it seems to be running better than my previous configuration running the Hard Fork version of everything (lets just keep calling it ETH for short).

Sunday night a number of self-proclaimed Ethereum Whales (who by the nature of the HF could be Whales on either chain) made an interesting post on a site called Bitflikz.

In the post they state that the Ethereum foundation are "legally obliged" to support the original blockchain (i.e. ETC). They go on to describe ETH as a "hardfork clone" that has no right to use of any of the ethereum assets - "ETH logo, branding, domains, github and funds belong to the original Ethereum chain".

They also detail how how they helped to orchestrate the intial rise in price of ETC on Poloniex and how they are continuing to protect the price. They also request contact with the DAO hacker who they describe as having "legally" obtained DAO funds.

ETC explodes - Again

Today (Tuesday 26th July 2016) ETC volume has literally gone through the roof. The roof of ETH volume that is. Currently it is around 66,000 BTC - a good 50% over the ETH volume at various times. The price of ETC is at an all time high approaching 290,000 satoshi as I write this.

Could this be the work of those aforementioned "ether whales"?

Miners

ETC is currently more profitable to mine as a result of all this. Thanks to @jackfruit for pointing out this useful tool on Slacknation that helps to calculate which chain is more profitable to mine. The more people that mine ETC the stronger the network will become - this will help to lend it further legitimacy.

It also appears that the aforementioned Mr Guo has softened his stance on ETC essentially stating that whilst it would be easy to attack the network that it would be "evil" as it would harm innocent ETC holders.

Conclusion

Whatever the cause of what is currently happening this is certainly a very interesting time to be watching the cryptoscene. I will be continuing to mine ETC whilst it remains profitable and even when it doesn't - just for the fun of it. Let me know what you think in the comments.