Ethereum Classic (ETC) is just a different version of the Ethereum (ETH) code base and blockchain.The two blockchains are identical up to block number 1,920,000 and after that they started working based on different rules, so the transactions and state changes happen independent of each other.To understand how ETC came into existence i feel like there is a need to explain The DAO.The DAO was a smart contract that was intended to work as a venture fund where everyone that contributed to the fund would get to vote on what projects/proposals get funded.A big part of the Ethereum community put a part of their Ether into this smart contract.By the time the fund raise ended, The DAO had became the biggest crowd fund ever.It topped 240 million dollars of value, all stored in ETH inside the contract.There were around 12 million Ether in the smart contract with 1 ETH being valued at over $20 at some point.The investors were supposed to get returns on the projects they funded and it would also help the Ethereum ecosystem.

One of the main selling points of this was that “The code is the contract” so what the code says and does, that’s the accepted version.Somebody found an exploit in the code and managed to get around 3 million Ether out of the contract.The price dropped but the DAO exploit managed to drain around $40 million worth of ETH from the contract.This is where all hell broke loose in the Ethereum community.There was also a community effort to use the same methods that the exploiter used to drain the rest of the funds so that they would at least be kept safe for a while, it was referred to as the ‘white hat’ attack.We soon started to have a debate on whether we are happy with this from an ethical and technological point of view.Some valued the integrity of the blockchain over ethical issues and other valued ethics over the integrity of the blockchain.It was a long (a few weeks) debate on social media and forums (some of it on the CryptoCompare ETH Forum) and eventually most of the developers, services and miners decided that social consensus is more important than the immutability of transactions.

There were a lot of valid arguments on both sides and it started a discussion that the community needed to have.The generally accepted solution was to add a state change in block 1,920,000 that would move all the funds that were drained through the DAO exploits in a new contract that had only one purpose, to return the ETH to the original DAO investors.When the block was mined, the blockchain split in two, on one side you had the miners, devs and services that valued returning the funds over blockchain immutability (ETH) and on the other side the miners, devs and services that valued immutability over returning the funds (ETC).bitcoin sdrObviously it’s not black and white, like I said there are a lot of valid arguments on both sides.So now we have two coins where there was one, there is the ETH coin that is generally supported by the vast majority of the community and there is ETC that was listed on a few exchanges and is starting to build a community as well.bitcoin safest wallet

So up to block 1,920,000 they are exactly the same and after that their transactions differ.If you had ETH before that block, you will own the same amount of ETC.As you can see in the links above, ETH is trading at a lot higher value than ETC and in my opinion, ETC won’t have that much to live, most of the big ETH holders had a stake in The DAO and they will probably sell their ETC coins as soon as they figure out that they can do it.c4 bitcoin certificationAlso on the ETC side, you have both the exploiter of the DAO holding 3 million ETH and the ‘white hat’ attackers have another 9 million that they will probably sell.It’s been definitely a crazy ride and we’ve had a lot of valuable discussion about the future of Ethereum.fig bitcoinA group of people expect it to behave like Bitcoin and another group are trying to find their own niche.bitcoin zdarma

I would say the Hard Fork was a good thing because there are already a lot of coins that mimic what Bitcoin is doing and if you want to stand out and fill in another niche of the market then you actually have to find your own values and principles.Decentralization, censorship resistance, immutability and ethical standards are all scales.bitcoin brick and mortarNothing is black and white as some people want to see it.Having Ethereum put a higher value on ethics and valuing other features less than it is not necessarily a bad thing.Only time will tell if this was a good choice but as a member of the Ethereum community i’m happy that we are having these discussion now, when we are still young (ETH is turning one in 4 days, on the 30th of July) rather than later.It’s easy to compare to Bitcoin and draw conclusions based on that and vice-versa but at the end of the day, once you get enough traction (and Ethereum has that), you need to find your on path.This is the easiest to understand version of the answer I could find.I can not add anything to this, so have left in it’s original form.“The Ethereum hard fork executed last week as a means of reimbursing investors who lost funds in the collapse of a major project has resulted in the creation of a competing currency on a blockchain replicating the platform’s original consensus rules prior to the fork.Announced last week, a project called Ethereum Classic is continuing to mine a version of the blockchain in which funds were never restored to investors in The DAO.

As observed here, the Ethereum Classic blockchain is now approximately 4,000 blocks behind the ethereum blockchain supported by ethereum’s original developers and community members.Initially dismissed due to a lack of vocal support, that narrative is now changing as digital currency exchanges and wallet providers move to extend services to those using the Ethereum Classic blockchain.The increase in institutional support has created new momentum for a project that has been active for days without support from miners, exchanges and other key components to an open blockchain ecosystem.However, earlier today, Poloniex, long the largest exchange for ethers (ETH), the digital currency native to the ethereum blockchain (sometimes referred to now as Ethereum Core or Ethereum One), added support for the native token running on the Ethereum Classic blockchain, called classic ether (ETC).In order to do so, Poloniex provided traders who owned ethers with a balance of classic ethers corresponding to the amount of ether they held on the exchange at the time of the fork, a move that effectively provided traders with new capital.”Source: Ethereum Hard Fork Creates Competing Currencies as Support for Ethereum Classic Rises - CoinDeskI made this point on another question but I will reiterate it here.There was once a time when there was only one Ethereum, and times were good.

The kids could play in the streets, and people invested in Ethereum because they thought of this world computer as something that could change and transform the world.Then everything changed when the F̶i̶r̶e̶ ̶N̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ Barry Silbert attacked.This is a personal recollection from Redditor Nooku, but I find it a fairly accurate description of what actually transpired.Now let me take you back to a time when things were simple.It all started during the spring of 2016:There was only one Ethereum coin you could buy (ETH).The Ethereum world computer was online for not even a year.Most investors invested in Ethereum because they saw this world computer as something that could change and transform the world.These early investors were visionaries.They saw the possibilities and were excited about what had been built.Excited about what was still going to be build.So here follows what the early adopters did next:Growing the eco-systemAn important task at that moment in time, was to grow the eco-system.

Companies and startups would be created and motivated to play around with the possibilities of this new technology.Thus the early investors were going to work together to build the eco-system from ground up.More than a thousand well intended investors had allocated a major part of their hard-earned wealth into a program / contract running on Ethereum (the contract was named TheDAO) which was created with the goal to fund startups in the eco-system for at least the next 4 years.The idea and the intention to grow the eco-system with this money, was so grand that more than 11 million Ether (12 % of all ETH in circulation) were allocated to this contract.With the sole plan being that these funds would then later be redistributed over hundreds of different projects, all trying and building different use-cases for Ethereum.Then summer came, and a software bugThen, for all these investors, the unthinkable happened.Due to an obscure bug in this contract, hackers managed to hijack and steal all of these funds.11 million Ether, now worth more than 2.5 billion USD that was meant for the growth and success of Ethereum, could now no longer be used.

It was a doomsday scenario for the Ethereum world computer and all dreams and enthusiasm turned into a nightmare for both investors as Ethereum enthusiasts.Bitcoin community celebrationsThere was joy too, on the other side of the crypto community.The biggest Bitcoin forum /r/Bitcoin , which was then famous for censoring (deleting) every single news piece on Ethereum, made an exception and allowed the posting of the "Great Ethereum hack".The supposedly pro-innovation Bitcoin-community celebrated the failure of another crypto-experiment that was trying to do something new.As if this was a competition instead of a collective project on building good things for the world.But their celebrations were premature.The Ethereum community stuck together, worked together, and fought back.Successfully.Through a hard fork, the Ethereum Foundation together with the communities consensus executed a successful redistribution of these funds away from the rogue hackers back into the hands of those who rightfully owned these ethers before: the investors.

This hard fork caused a split in the Ethereum chain, with the old chain and the new chain.The problem, the bug, the mistake, was undone.The money was once again in the hands of the investors, so it could feed the eco-system: a VITAL moment in Ethereum's history.And so it happened.All of the innovation that we've seen in the past year, and also the ICO's, got fueled by this money, money that was always meant for investments and growth.At the same time, not having 12 % of the coins in hands of 1 group of hackers, but instead distributed in the hands of the rightful owners, was another important element to ensure the Ethereum blockchain remains secure for the future./r/Bitcoin's reaction: The creation of "Ethereum Classic" (ETC)But the Bitcoin community didn't approve of this success.Famous Bitcoin members like the /r/Bitcoin moderators, and institutional Bitcoin investors like Barry Silbert, who had been tweeting and posting about "Why Ethereum can never work" in the months before the above chaos, initiated a new plan.The plan was to disrupt the Ethereum network by reviving the old chain.

To prove that "hard forks are dangerous" by trying to make Ethereums' hard fork fail, trying to kill off Ethereum in the process.This was going to be their best and probably only chance to get rid of this young but strong innovative "rival".Thus, they suddenly allowed Ethereum posts promoting the mining of the old chain.They also spawned their own community around it, calling it "Ethereum Classic" and Barry Silberts co-owned exchange "Poloniex" raced to be the first exchange to start trading the coin of this old chain (ETC).Thus artificially legitimatizing the ETC coin.These old Ethereum-haters turned into Ethereum Classic evangelists.The Ethereum Classic community was being joined solely by people who had a posting history of negativity against Ethereum.None of these people had any /r/Ethereum posting history, while having a lot of /r/Bitcoin activity.How convenient for Bitcoin.ETC is an Attack against EthereumLet's make this clear here.Ethereum Classic is, and always has been, an attack against Ethereum, trying to disturb the cohesion of the Ethereum network and the Ethereum community.

But let it be clear that the growth of Ethereums eco-system has proven that our community is much stronger and more vigilant than these attackers had hoped or imagined.The flippening, the moment ETH exceeds BTC, is coming closer every week.Every time you buy ETC, you are actively supporting an attack on Ethereum by donating your money to these people, with the added risk to lose your investment.Ethereum Classic has no community, no development team, no future in the real world.It's a technological attack, and a monetary scam, with its biggest investors and its biggest pumpers being people involved in Bitcoin, people like Barry Silbert.If you believe in the future of Ethereum, buy the real deal, the real thing, which is the ether, the ETH that is the only token that gives you access to the real network.If you want to diversify your wealth, I encourage you to do so.Look for the real interesting innovative technologies that want to bring something good to this world, to let us all move forward.