Ethereum Launches
Vitalik Buterin and The Ethereum Foundation create the first blockchain-based turing-complete smart contract platform
Roadmap
This page outlines the history of Ethereum Classic and it's future development goals.
ETC Timeline
A historical account of the events that created and defined Ethereum Classic.
July 30 2015
April 5 2016
Slock.it Creates TheDAO
Slock.it construct TheDAO Ethereum Contract; a security audit is completed by Dejavu
April 30 2016
TheDAO Crowdsale Begins
TheDAO smart contract is deployed; members of the public send it value in return for DAO tokens
May 26 2016
Security Proposal
Slock.it announce a $1.5 Million USD proposal, paid in Ether by the crowdfund, 'to guarantee the integrity of The DAO'
May 27 2016
Moratorium Called
On the last day of the crowdsale, DAO curator Vlad Zamfir calls for a moratorium on TheDAO, citing many game-theoretical security issues
May 27 2016
TheDAO Crowdsale Ends
The crowdsale completes to become the world's largest and raising an incredible $150 Million USD
Jun 9 2016
Recursive Call Bug Discovered
Peter Vessenes publicly discloses the existence of a critical security vulnerability overlooked in many Solidiy contracts
Jun 12 2016
No Funds at Risk
Stephan Tual publicly claims that TheDAO funds are safe despite the newly-discovered critical security flaw
Jun 17 2016
TheDAO is Hacked
Ether is slowly and silently drained from TheDAO as the re-entry bug is applied
Jun 17 2016
Panic Hits the Markets
The price of Ether is slashed in half as Griff Green announces that TheDAO has been hacked
Jun 17 2016
The Countdown Beings
TheDAO's splitting mechanism gives around a month for a solution to be found that recovers the funds; Foundation and community developers race to implement a soft fork
Jun 21 2016
Robin Hood Group Announced
A group of 'white-hat' hackers secure 70% of TheDAO funds but protocol-level action is required to save the remaining 30% split by the hacker
Jun 24 2016
DAO Wars: Soft Fork Vote
The Ethereum Foundation releases a 'Soft Fork' client to censor transactions coming from the hacker; mining pools vote to enable it by lowering gas limit
Jun 28 2016
Soft Fork Vulnerability
Critical Denial of Service flaws are found in the Soft Fork implementation, miners quickly decide not to use it
Jun 28 - Jul 15
Hard Fork Debate
Many days of intense arguing goes on in the Ethereum community about the pros and cons of implementing a Hard Fork
Jul 15 2016
Hard Fork Spec Announced
The only remaining option is a controversial Hard Fork. A Specification is determined and announced by Slock.it and Ethereum Foundation members
Jul 15 2016
Last Minute Carbonvote
With 12 hours notice, The Ethereum Foundation use a controversial third party 'coin vote' to determine that the Hard Fork should be turned on by default; consensus is declared and an updated client is released
Jul 20 2016
DAO Bailout Hard Fork
With around 80% of nodes updating to the new client, the community nervously await the arrival of the Hard Fork activation block 1920000
Block 1920000
Mission Accomplished!
The community lets out a sigh of relief as the Hard Fork code is succesfully implemented with no obvious flaws; champagne corks are popped all over the globe
Block 1920001
Ethereum Classic is Born
With predictions of the original non-forked chain to disappear within hours, many are surprised to find that miners continue mining blocks and OTC trading of the original chain tokens gives them value
Jul 23 2016
Poloniex Lists ETC
The largest Ethereum exchange lists 'ETC' - Ethereum Classic; many exchanges quickly follow suit, ETC price peaks to 1/3 of ETH's
Jul 23 Onwards
Community in Disarray
Flame wars begin in the once peaceful /r/Ethereum and /r/ethtrader subreddits and economically-charged vitriolic spats begin to take hold of the community as it comes to terms with the split
Jul 24 2016
Ethereum Classic Community
The Ethereum Classic community begins to branch off from the forked-chain subreddits and form its own communication channels, including /r/EthereumClassic, Slack and Telegram
Aug 10 2016
RHG Strikes Back
The Robin Hood Group attempts to dump a large quantity of stolen ETC on the market. Poloniex freezes the funds. Uncertainty reaches an all time high
Block 2050000
Classic Declares Independence
Declaration of Independence on the ETC website is published stating ETC no longer wants to be in association with the Foundation
Aug 15 2016
Classic Rebuilds
The Ethereum Classic community begins to rally behind a stabilizing ETC price by rebuilding on the Classic network; this website is created, groups are formed, new ideas begin to surface
Aug 31 2016
DAO ETC unlocked
Millions of previously locked or frozen ETC become available to DAO token holders and DAO attacker. Despite predictions of doom and gloom, ETC price holds remarkably well in face of huge dumps
Oct 25 2016
Attacks and Upgrades
Both Ethereums are hit with non-stop network attacks; ETC devs quickly ensure smooth and uncontentious network upgrade to patch exploited vulnerabilities
Nov 1 2016
ETC Monetary Policy
Classic community starts debating ETC monetary policy and emission schedule, as a way to align interests of platform users, miners, investors and developers
Dec 11 2016
Grothendieck team
A team of 7 full-time developers, committed by IOHK, starts working for Ethereum Classic
Block 3000000
ETC Diehard Upgrade
ETC goes through a non-contentious network upgrade, resolving critical issues such as difficulty bomb and replay attacks
Feb 20 2017
ETCDEV Team Announcement
A team of long-term ETC contributors and volunteers rebrands as a ETCDEV team
March 1 2017
Monetary Policy Adopted
Ethereum Classic community adopts a fixed-cap monetary policy with a Bitcoin-like limited emission schedule
March 1 2017
ETC Investment Fund
Grayscale circulates investment thesis for 'Ethereum (ETC) Investment Trust', first non-bitcoin crypto fund targeted at traditional investors
Sept 2017
Birth of ETC Cooperative
ETC Cooperative legal entity was created Sep 2017 as LLC. Application for non-profit status was made May 2018 and approved Nov 2018, retroactive to the date of application
Block 5,000,000
Era 2 Arrives
On Dec 11 2017, ECIP-1017's 2nd Era kicked in, reducing emission by 20%
May 19 2018
ECIP 1041 Network Upgrade
ETC safely disabled the difficulty bomb that was put in place to switch the original Ethereum project to PoS. Ethereum Classic commits itself to PoW as it's consensus mechanism.
Jun 2018
Birth of ETC Labs
ETC Labs provides funding, industry connections, and office space to burgeoning ETC projects; with office space in San Francisco and Singapore.
Sept 8 2018
Birth of the Kotti Testnet
A Proof-of-Authority (Clique) testnet constructed to provide interoperability testing with sister-chain ETH's Görli Testnet. POA becomes the preferred testnet environment for dapp development testing.
Oct 1 2018
Coinbase Lists Ethereum Classic
The largest cryptocurrency exchange in the USA signals long-term support for Ethereum Classic.
Oct 25 2018
ETC Labs Incubator Program
The company’s incubator program will work with as many as 24 Ethereum Classic based startups each year
Jan 2019
51% Attack
The Chinese blockchain security firm SlowMist sent out an alert, that the Ethereum Classic network might have been targeted by hashpower consolidation (chain reorganization).
Sept 30 2019
Atlantis Upgrade
ECIP-1054 was implemented to enable the outstanding Ethereum Foundation Spurious Dragon and Byzantium network protocol upgrades.
Oct 3 2019
The birth of Mordor PoW Testnet
The retiring of old PoW testnets to clean up pre-chain split baggage.
Jan 12 2020
Agharta Upgrade
ECIP-1056 was implement to enable the outstanding Ethereum Foundation Constaninople and Petersburg network protocol upgrades.
Block 10,000,000
5M20 Era 3 Arrives
On March 17, 2020, Ethereum Classic's 5M20 monetary policy moved to Era3. The emission schedule, outlined in ECIP1017, reduced the block reward by 20%, from 4 to 3.2 ETC, on block 10 million.
To Be Continued
As Ethereum Classic community and its two independent dev teams start to focus efforts on development and applications, we look forward to ETC becoming a decentralized immutable public infrastructure of the future...
Drag to progress (or hold shift and wheel)!
Final ECIPs
These ECIPs (Ethereum Classic Improvement Proposals) have been accepted and have or will be implemented soon.
| Number | Title | Authors |
|---|---|---|
| 1010 | Delay Difficulty Bomb Explosion | Igor Artamonov |
| 1015 | Long-term gas cost changes for IO-heavy operations to mitigate transaction spam attacks | Cody W Burns |
| 1017 | Monetary Policy and Final Modification to the Ethereum Classic Emission Schedule | Matthew Mazur |
| 1039 | Monetary policy rounding specification | Isaac Ardis |
| 1041 | Remove Difficulty Bomb | Igor Artamonov |
| 1048 | Clique proof-of-authority consensus protocol | Péter Szilágyi |
| 1050 | Status Codes | Brooklyn Zelenka, Boris Mann |
| 1054 | Atlantis EVM and Protocol Upgrades | Isaac Ardis |
| 1056 | Agharta EVM and Protocol Upgrades | Isaac Ardis, Wei Tang |
Source: https://ecips.ethereumclassic.org
Development Roadmap 2020
An outline of important protocol development milestones for the year of 2020, including highlights from the ETC Core 2020 Roadmap.
Q1
Review and address Aztlan Upgrade's testnet discoveries. Reflect and review technical specifications for Istanbul ETH parity project under ECIP-1088 with new codename Phoenix. Keep mainnet activation timeline at block 10,500,839.
Q1
Monetary Policy Event: 5M20 Era3 block reward reduction from 4 to 3.2 ETC on March 17, 2020.
Q1
Kotti and Mordor testnet implementation for Phoenix Upgrade in Core-Geth, Hyperledger Besu, Multi-Geth, and Open-Ethereum network clients.
Q1 March
Phoenix testing begins on the Kotti and Mordor testnets. Core development teams have signaled that this is a complex upgrade. Testing may uncover issues that delay this network upgrade, but Ethereum Classic will never rush to upgrade the mainnet. Network security is priority over development speed and arbitary timelines.
Q1
Status Codes: ECIP-1050 moves to Final status.
Q1
The 2020 EthereumClassic.org Website Modernization project goes live with a goal of providing accurate ETC content and automated information dissemination lines for the great cryptocurrency ecosystem.
Q1
Testnet management and maintenance for Kotti and Mordor networks.
Q1
eth/65 protocol to be implemented by etclabscore/core-geth enabling lower-bandwidth transaction pool messaging
Q1 - Q2
SOLL and Vyper compiler integration
Q1 - Q3
Ethereum Protocol Provider Chain Configuration Standard and translational tooling
Q1 - Q3
SHA3 consensus algo research review
Q1 - Q4
LLVM 1.0 Candidate
Q1 - Q4
Second State, Vyperlang, and other teams are implementing or experimenting in bringing LLVM infrastructure to the EthereumStack.
Q2
Automated communication Lines to the General Public and ETC Participants via RSS feeds.
Q2
Improve Documentation
Q2
Build ETC Specific Guides.
Q2
Phoenix Upgrade Backward Compatibility Testing.
Q2
Phoenix Upgrade Gas Vulnerability Testing
Q2
Account Versioning Review. Potential
Q2
GitCoin Crowdfunding Native ETC
Q2 - Q3
LLVM Instruction scheduler and performance optimizations
Q2 - Q3
JSON-RPC devp2p Wire protocol specification and reference implementation research and possible design
Q2 - Q4
EVM Account Versioning; Versionless EVM and Ungas research and implementations.
Q3
Long-term Development Resources Discussion: Public Good Network Protocols, Fund Disbursement Methods, DAO fund allocation.
Q3
Updates to ECIP process via ECIP-0001
Q3
Account Versioning
Q3
Astor Testnet tests/results
Q3
Gas Range Discussion: Upper and Lower Bounds
Q3 - Q4
LLVM Official beta release
Q3 - Q4
LLVM Implementation: Embedded assembly and exception handling
Q3 - Q4
ETL Tooling patterns and research into providing support for cross-chain transaction transforms
Q4
Mining Algorithm Discussion: Astor SHA3 Change, DAG reduction, No Change,
Q4
Interoperability Projects: Port over ETH network protocols. Build ETH<>ETC bridges.
Q4
FlyClients Discussion
Q4
Interoperability Market Capture. ETC added to more products increase access/utility for ETC.