Ethereum is the leading blockchain platform for building smart contracts and decentralized applications. It is also a platform for building other projects and there are hundreds of these projects.
There’s another crypto project that has a similar name – Ethereum Classic. It’s quite easy to mix up the two because they both have the word “Ethereum” in them. While this suggests they may have some things in common and it’s true, they also have many fundamental differences between them.
In this guide, we discuss the two crypto projects, with their similarities and differences to help you differentiate them.
What is Ethereum?
Ethereum is the second largest crypto project by market capitalization, and has been in that position for a long time now. This is probably because the network is the largest when it comes to building smart contracts and decentralized applications.
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Ether is used as the native token for running this ecosystem, and is used for paying fees and other required payments for using the network. Ethereum initially used the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm to verify transactions and keep the network, just like Ethereum Classic.
However, not long ago, the network migrated to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, and is now referred to as Ethereum 2.0. The migration became necessary because Ethereum became burdened and had problems with scalability, which resulted in high fees.
The migration to PoS hasn’t helped much though, as Ethereum still has low scalability and slow transactions with high fees.this has led to the creation of rival networks with better scalability and lower transaction fees.
What is Ethereum Classic?
Ethereum Classic is an open-source, decentralized, blockchain-based distributed cryptocurrency platform that runs smart contracts. The platform was created in 2016 from Ethereum via a hard fork.
As a result of a hack of a decentralized application known as The DAO, there arose a controversy between Ethereum developers, and most of them voted to reverse the transaction and bail out the victims, while others insisted that the victims be allowed to suffer the loss
This resulted in a hard fork that led to the creation of Ethereum Classic, the original Etehreum whose developers insisted on irreversible transactions, and the one currently known as Ethereum.
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Even though Ethereum Classic and Ethereum are now two different blockchains with different goals, they also have many similarities, since they had the same blockchain up to block 1,920,000 when the hack happened.
The primary goal of Ethereum Classic is to become a global payment network using smart contracts, and has been making new changes and upgrades to the network to make it more attractive to developers and users alike.
Ethereum Classic has also suffered 51% attacks, which are attacks on the network resulting from some miners compromising. Ethereum hasn’t suffered such an attack since the split in 2016, so many people consider Ethereum to be the better of the two.
Similarities Between Ethereum and Ethereum Classic
Both Ethereum and Ethereum Classic are open-source, decentralized smart contract platforms. This means that they are not controlled by any central entity, just like every other true cryptocurrency.
Both networks run using nodes, which are computers distributed all over the world to maintain the network.
Differences between Ethereum and Ethereum Classic
Ethereum has a lot of fundamental differences from Ethereum Classic. First, Ethereum uses ETH or ether as its native token, while Ethereum Classic uses ETC as its native token.
Secondly, Ethereum has migrated to the PoS consensus mechanism, but Ethereum Classic continues to use the old PoW consensus algorithm.
While Ethereum doesn’t have a capped supply for ether, Ethereum Classic has a supply cap of 230 million ETC tokens that will ever be mined.
Another fundamental difference which also led to the splitting of the network is that while Ethereum allows for a prior transaction to be altered and adjusted, Ethereum Classic doesn’t allow such and any prior transaction is final.
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