Ethereum Classic Successfully Completes Third Hard Fork Phoenix, Earlier Than Expected

Ethereum Classic completed its third successful fork of the year, named Phoenix, which introduces complete compatibility with Ethereum, including its Istanbul hard fork upgrades.

The ETC Phoenix upgrade scheduled to go live at block number #10,500,839, however, came about ten days early from the planned event date. This hard fork follows the successful updates of Atlantis and Agharta upgrades in the past year.

Atlantis, Agharta, and Phoenix complete the ETC-ETH parity making way for more valuable research and innovations to come. Phoenix marks the 3rd upgrade completed in this series for #EthereumClassic.

🎉 Phoenix Successfully Activates on Ethereum Classic 🎉 https://t.co/pyaDRSYZtD

— Ethereum Classic (@eth_classic) June 1, 2020

While the two blockchains will remain completely independent, the update increases the efficiency in collaborative use cases, tools, and future opportunities to absolute technical compatibility between ETH, ETC.

So far, a total of 326 clients or 68.4% of the total client nodes have successfully synced to the Phoenix upgrade including Corgeth, Multigeth and OpenEthereum (which has a few issues).

Despite the hard fork going live over 14 hours ago, Besu client node is yet to sync on the new update fully. Besu is used by enterprise clients, including projects like Hyperledger, which does not affect the blockchain in any way.

Parity client is currently moved to OpenEthereum after the Parity Tech devs no longer manage and maintain the client.

ETC/USD Remains Stagnant Despite Successful Fork

The price of ETC against the dollar dropped on the news of the fork coming ten days early – losing three percent in the past day. The ‘original Ethereum’ currently trades at $7.00 across major exchanges, representing a 6.2% spike in the past week.

Ethereum Classic continues its fight to supremacy after surviving a certain death during Ethereum’s fork from the chain. Recently, the leading blockchain developers on Ethereum Classic, ETC Labs, announced they would integrate Chainlink’s decentralized oracle system to improve the system.