Ethereum Classic hard fork will dismantle a difficulty bomb
The cryptocurrency called Ethereum Classic will soon have a new hard fork. In this case, this does not mean any new altcoins emerging, it’s more about the optimization of the financial protocol.
$ETC is hard forking in May to remove the difficulty bomb.https://t.co/RtlKpJ9yrF
— ETC Cooperative (@ETCCooperative) March 14, 2018
Thanks @etcdev!@BithumbOfficial@coinone_info@binance_2017@bitfinex@poloniex@BittrexExchange
For those reading along: There's no "free coins" with this fork. This is a network improvement.
This fork will remove a difficulty bomb which has not been planted by any hackers, it is a legacy of Ethereum - the origin cryptocurrency of Ethereum Classic. In short, the difficulty bomb has been designed to ease the move to the PoS concept from the PoW, but unlike the Ethereum community, developers of Ethereum classic do not plan to change this.
The PoW (Proof-of-Work) concept makes cryptocurrency dependent of mining, while the PoS (Proof-of-Stake) eventually makes mining irrelevant. For this reason, creator of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin deems the separate ASIC defense update unnecessary, as the future move of ETH to PoS will secure the altcoin’s future from mining whales anyway.
Geth and Parity client users who operate with Ethereum Classic are recommended to update their software to the latest versions before block 5,900,000 (expected at the end of May).
More on the nature of cryptocurrency forks and how Ethereum Classic has emerged can be read in a separate educational material made by Bitnewstoday.
Image: The Merkle