Ethereum Foundation (ETH) Donates $150,000 USD To Ethereum Classic (ETC)

The Ethereum Foundation has recently announced that it would donate 15,000 ETC (a little bit less than $135,000 USD depending on the current price) to the Ethereum Classic Cooperative. The announcement was made via the Ethereum Special Projects’ Medium blog.

After the announcement, many people from the community have been claiming that the two institutions are back together after their break up two years ago. Ethereum Classic (ETC), in case you do not know, is a smart contract platform that refers to the original Ethereum code and it still uses its chain.

Happy Devcon to @ETCCooperative @eth_classic. We believe in you.https://t.co/GYK6pDqbjC

— Virgil Griffith | 𝚟𝚒𝚛𝚐𝚒𝚕.𝚎𝚝𝚑 (@virgilgr) October 30, 2018

The Split In 2016

The reasons for the separation go back to when the Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) was hacked and the current ETH dev team decided to undo the theft while the ETC team did not because they did not want the immutability of the Ethereum network to be compromised.

At the occasion, the DAO lost more than $50 million USD in the attack and the hacker had to wait 28 days to withdraw the money due to the binding smart contract that he exploited. As some people wanted to stop the hacker and undo the transaction and others did not, the network was split at the block 1.9 million on July 20, 2016.

Since the split, the two communities maintained their distance from each other and only recently their relationship has gotten somewhat better after the Ethereum Foundation has welcomed Anthony Lusardi, the director of ETC Cooperative, to speak about how the two communities can work together at the EDCON. After that, the climate has been better.

A Future of Cooperation?

The companies are reported to be working together for funding Akomba Labs in its effort to create an ETH-ETC “Peace Bridge”, which will represent the transactions of each chain on the other.

Will these two groups finally be able to get together again? We can only hope for the best.