No one would have anticipated that the “real Ethereum” would become a shadow of itself years ago. Since the DAO hack, Ethereum Classic has struggled to live up to expectations of investors and the community. It seems that the platform is geared towards reasserting its position as a prominent smart contract platform.
In a recent blog post titled “Ethereum Classic Protocol Compact” published on September 27, Donald McIntyre proposed a number of issues that have hindered the progress of the project. He also proffered solutions to them with the hope that the roadmap of the project would be actualized.
According to him, the ease with which the Ethereum Classic chain is reorganized is the main contributory factor to slow pace of development of the project which has led to loss of liquidity and hashrate over time.
His view is that:
“it has been very easy to persistently reorganize the chain, significantly disrupting it.”
He further made it clear that a number of improvement proposals that have been put forward for the Ethereum Classic network would not necessarily guarantee its continuity.
He added that some of the challenges faced by the network are external in nature. Even though he didn’t specify what these problems are, he said they could lead to a permanent loss of liquidity, but suggested that there are some internal changes that needed to be made to avoid this.
It’s an unavoidable reality that @eth_classic has lost momentum in market share and hash-rate. If not addressed, continued reorganizations could permanently hinder network’s future development.
— Ethereum Classic (@eth_classic) September 28, 2020
Ethereum Classic Protocol Compact 2020 https://t.co/n7gdQMFfLG via @EtherplanLive
Improvement Proposal On Ground
McIntyre stated that there have been a number of proposals that have garnered enough consensus, but highlighted that three of them have the capacity to turn things around for the network. These are ECIP-1049 (Keccak 256), ECIP-1098 (Treasury) and ECIP 1100 (MESS). He added that, in his opinion, that the former is the singular most important network change that would bestow stability on Ethereum Classic because it aligns with strong blockchain principles”
The essence of the ECIP-1049 is to restore the network to its original design. In view of this, another proposal termed ECIP-1000 has been proposed that incorporates the three proposals mentioned above although setting time limits for ECIP-1098 and ECIP-1100 (Treasury and MESS respectively).
How This Would Be Accomplished
ECIP-1049 aims to change the Ethereum Classic proof-of-work algorithm to Keccak 256 which is considered a strong, clean algorithm at par with that of Bitcoin. The ECIP-1098 is a treasury system that incentivizes project that are being built on the Ethereum Classic chain through funding while ECIP 1100 (Modified Exponential Subjective Scoring) makes it difficult for double spenders and reorganization attackers to disrupt the system.
McIntyre however, stated that the ECIP-1049 is at variance with ECIP-1100, which poses some technical challenges, but admitted that there is a consensus by the community that something needed to be done quickly to make the network recover its place of pride as a blockchain network.
The next few months would be crucial for Ethereum Classic, as the community work to re-invent itself.
