The smart contract Ethereum fork is making moves in the market...

Ethereum's little brother, Ethereum Classic, has been trading very actively lately. Its volume and price have surged over the past couple days while Ethereum itself has seen relatively little movement.

Why are traders choosing to invest in ETC at the moment?

Sure, part of the current activity is FOMO and a bit of pumping is quite likely. But there's more to this situation than a simple pump.

Ethereum has been through a bit of drama over the past year (Thanks, Captain Obvious! Right?). Ethereum had steadily been gaining ground when it was struck by a devastating hack of about $64 million worth of Ethereum at the time. The team behind Ethereum, led by Vitalik Buterin, decided to turn back the clock on the hack, rendering the stolen tokens worthless, but causing a fork when resetting the blockchain to a previous state. Thus, Ethereum Classic was born.

Ethereum Classic was then mined by those who believed in the integrity of the blockchain, despite hacks or thefts; that the blockchain can't just be rebooted whenever a central authority decides to flip the switch, but that it must instead stand on its own two feet, good or bad consequences. Ethereum Classic adherents believe strongly in this more decentralised, non-manipulated, and "true" blockchain. On the Ethereum Classic website, it is boldly stated:

Transaction Finality
We believe the core value proposition of any blockchain is immutability; valid transactions can never be erased or forgotten. Individuals interacting on Ethereum Classic are governed by this reality; Code is Law (source)

This naturally stirred up a great deal of controversy in the Ethereum community, but it is not until now, many months later, that Ethereum Classic seems to be getting much attention. Ethereum has had its share of disagreement lately, whether it be problems with high gas costs (the transaction medium used for Ethereum-based trades), difficulties with scaling to handle ERC token traffic, or the arguments over the implementation of Proof-of-Stake, abandoning Proof-of-Work, that some feel is a threat to the Ethereum eco-system.

It may be that traders are seeing Ethereum Classic as a positive alternative, with its less centralised development community and its alternative solutions to Ethereum's problems. The team behind Ethereum Classic goes so far as to state this specific distinction on the front page of their website:

Decentralized Governance
There are many problems that fester due to centralization and opaqueness; corruption, unaccountability, nepotism, inefficiency and stagnation. Ultimately, centralization leads to fragility; only decentralized systems can stand the test of time.

These problems can be only solved by adhering to governance systems that do not rely on a central point of failure. Just like distributed networks and the consensus protocol itself, we believe that only truly decentralized projects can survive in the long run.

Ethereum Classic manifests these values by relinquishing control by a formalized central foundation. The only hierarchy is that of transparent meritocracy and mutual reputation. No backroom deals or behind-closed-doors unilateral decision making; just free and open discourse (source).

To find out more about Ethereum Classic, check out their website.

sources:
https://ethereumclassic.github.io/
https://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-time-highs-overshadow-wave-technical-issues/
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/ethereum-hack-blockchain-fork-bitcoin-1.3719009

image source:
https://medium.com/@christophershen/ico-on-ethereum-classic-really-75d8a10ab3f1

*This is not professional trading advice - it's just my opinion!

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