ETH v ETC, Is It Back?

The crypto appears to have suddenly jumped, but clearly there’s a statement here and a fairly big one.

ETC is claiming, or wants us to think it is claiming, that it will be the refuge of current ethereum miners once eth goes full Proof of Stake (PoS) this summer.

Is this a legit claim? Big question that probably has a difficult road to get to a yes answer because it looks like so much is stacked against it that it would probably need a miracle.

Starting with its hashrate, it is tiny, about 2% of eth’s. There is also no indication miners are considering it, although hash follows price so it may well be miners are paving the way, or some whale.

Berry Silbert was the most prominent backer of ETC back in 2016 when it forked from ethereum due to a now arcane debate on whether a hacker of one of the first dapps on eth, the Slockit DAO, should be ‘cancelled’ in a fork that eth did perform which changed accounts from the hacker to the rightful eth owners.

ETC didn’t change the accounts so this hacker kept some 200,000 ETC, with a lot of what was one million ETC or more, recovered by ‘whitehat hackers.’

This is just background and in many ways irrelevant to the current question, except subjectively in as far as ETC has too much baggage.

Times are very different now and these disputes have long been settled, so logically someone like Mr. Shilbert probably has different financial interests than six years ago, more aligned with eth.

Although, the flippening is back in the outer corner of whispers, so a dance is not un-envisionable. Still, the question remains: what would be a dance in our times?

ETH or Not ETH

We could start with giving some data. ETC’s market cap is about 2% of eth’s. It’s part of the rule that proves a potential dictum: crypto blockchain forks seem to suffer from the curse of changing fundamental parameters irrelevant to the cause of the fork.

Not defi dapps as far as we can see, but ETC put a cap of 210 million coins. That’s twice eth’s supply, an eth that is going deflationary and will reduce their total supply.

ETC also has 133 million coins, about 10% more than eth. It was 51% attacked, and it’s kind of frozen in 2016. No dapps, no NFTs, no nothing.

Its hashrate is probably not even one home miner in eth. Exaggeration, but it just goes to show you’d need a lot of a fantastic ambitious obsession to make this a real viable option for eth miners refuge, and you’d be running against the objective conclusion that pretty much six years of history would be erased from current eth as ETC hasn’t mirrored it since 2016.

Sure you can copy pasta the dapps, but what man of worth, or woman, would pay even a second of attention when this is so old, it is just boring.

It can’t work, not logically anyway. The only thing that can work is to actually eth. That is a new fork that at block 1337 (leet), when eth goes full Proof of Stake, the Proof of Work (PoW) network just keeps running anyway in a new far, far better ETC.

Call It PET

A key distinguishing feature between PET and ETC would be the fact that PET wouldn’t be anti-eth.

It’s just a backup, and backups have value of course. You can also call it a museum preservation piece.

It would have a far higher inflation rate than eth, but it would also have, by comparison, total security.

Total in a relative sense. With seven years of smooth functioning, if we give PET 100 where security is concerned, we’d probably have to give the new PoS ethereum network 90 to please, but maybe 80 more realistically.

It has a lower threshold for things to go wrong, 33% as opposed to 51% – and even then not really, comparatively – for PoW. And it also removes, maybe an idealistic but still a distinguishing quality of being able to require no permission to gain eth.

That’s because in PoS eth, you have to buy the eth from someone, and of course that someone, and maybe even all-ones, can be prevented from giving it to you. In PoW eth, you can gain the eth from the network directly in a completely anon way by just giving it math codes, or by just mining as we so crudely call it.

That’s a small difference and bitcoin will keep doing it anyway so what does it matter, but it is a difference and part of ‘why PET’.

Another, potentially far more consequential difference, although more an un-illustrated unknown, may well be the fact that PoS eth has not showcased a chain-split fork, yet.

It might do, but even a 1% chance that it might not is good enough because Trustnodes’ definition of decentralization is a network that anyone, with basic skills and ordinary resources, can chain-split fork it.

We can’t recall any PoS network being chain-split forked. Maybe just because they tended to be tiny and irrelevant, but why take chances at no cost.

Here it is even better: why not take chances with potentially huge rewards, as an amicable backup pet of eth can potentially be.

And potentially it is even vital, at least initially. No one knows the future. An eth2 client may well be sabotaged. We don’t want to even think of what that could bring, especially if more than 33% of stakers run it.

Still it is just code, we did kick out the Slockit DAO hacker, but is there realistically an objective escaping of the conclusion that at least initially the PoS ethereum network will be new and by that very fact it might, might, fire trial.

The devs of course have taken all measures to ensure no fire trial. PoS in eth has been in development at proposition since 2015, full attention since 2018, and the PoS eth Beacon chain network, to which eth will upgrade, has been running since December 1st 2020 without any problems.

But, bitcoiners did some free bounty bug hunting in PoW eth in 2016. How many ‘cream’ coders have really looked at the new PoS chain with the aim of causing damage just because F U?

And what happens if we don’t like this PoS network anyway? What happens if we have some silly ideas that PoW energy research might propel us to Jupiter? What happens if these stakers misbehave, though in a frogboiling keep masses asleep way, or if exchanges tact by tact get stick positions to pleb.

There has to be choice. Maybe it amounts to nothing, but competition can only be good. Though not to those who want to control etc, in which case pretending that very etcetera is competition is exactly what you’d expect.

A killing of an idea that eth can of course PoS and should be fully supported towards making a success in that endeavor, but at the point of break a mirror of it should keep on in PoW so that, de minimis, the upgrade is a completely and a fully informed choice to iron out the actual potential bugs.

Because code is not the real bugs. Man is, and his endless thirst for power and control. Something we can only keep in check through competition.

Let the network stand or fall on its merits therefore, because otherwise there will be no other outcome but fall.

Also, a proper amicable chain-split would be the biggest airdrop in crypto history. The only way it doesn’t happen, at that leet block, is if the ethereum ecosystem has been so fully anted that there are no longer men.