Since their inception, both Ethereum and Ethereum Classic have been widely regarded as two of the most promising cryptocurrency projects in the industry. Both platforms offer a decentralized Turing-complete virtual machine, known as the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which allows for the execution of smart contracts.
In addition, both platforms make use of a blockchain that supports a native cryptocurrency, Ether (ETH).
However, despite these similarities, there are also a number of key differences between Ethereum and Ethereum Classic that should be considered when making an investment decision.
The most significant difference between Ethereum and Ethereum Classic is in their respective philosophies regarding immutability. Immutability is a core principle of blockchain technology that refers to the unchangeable nature of transaction data once it has been written to the blockchain.
Ethereum Classic adheres strictly to this principle, while Ethereum has taken a more flexible approach. In 2016, following the hack of the DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization built on top of the Ethereum platform, the Ethereum Foundation decided to hard fork the Ethereum blockchain in order to refund investors who had lost funds in the attack.
This decision was highly controversial and resulted in a split in the community, with some members remaining dedicated to the original vision of immutability and others supporting the hard fork. As a result, Ethereum Classic was born.
Since then, both projects have continued to evolve and differ in a number of key ways. Perhaps the most notable difference is in their approach to scalability.
Scalability refers to a blockchain’s ability to handle increasing levels of transaction volume without compromising security or performance.
Ethereum has made significant progress on this front with its implementation of sharding, which is a technique for partitioning data across multiple nodes in order to improve efficiency. While sharding is not yet live on the mainnet, it is expected to improve Ethereum’s scalability by orders of magnitude once it is fully implemented.
Ethereum Classic, on the other hand, has taken a different approach with its development of sidechains. Sidechains are independent blockchains that are connected to the main chain through a two-way peg.
This allows for increased scalability as transactions can be processed on sidechains while still being secured by the main chain.
In addition to these differences in philosophy and technical implementation, there are also some notable differences in governance between Ethereum and Ethereum Classic. Perhaps most notably, Ethereum has moved towards a more centralized governance model with the launch of its EIP-1 process for proposal and review of protocol changes.
Ethereum Classic, on the other hand, remains true to its roots with a more decentralized governance model that relies on community consensus for making decisions about protocol changes. These differences in governance philosophy are likely to result in different trajectories for each project going forward.
Investors considering an investment in either Ethereum or Ethereum Classic should carefully consider these key differences before making a decision.