Ethereum Classic Lays Out Roadmap

It has been just over a month since Ethereum Classic was brought into existence and supporters of this chain of Ethereum recently presented a roadmap for the next couple of years at the first Ethereum Classic (ETC) meetup in London, presented by Dr. Avtar Sehra.

The splitting of the Ethereum blockchain arose s a result of a difference in values. While the Ethereum blockchain ‘forked’ to return the stolen DAO funds to the original investors, Ethereum Classic is the immutable version, standing by the principle ‘code is law’. Advocates of the Classic version want to ensure that the underlying infrastructure can only be changed for upgrades, updates, and bugs. Also, supporters of ETC argue that infrastructure should be a ‘truth machine’ that cannot be changed no matter what the circumstances are.

Moreover, advocates of ETC also contend that decentralization of infrastructure is not sufficient to minimize points of failure. For example, the Ethereum developers were said to be heavily invested in the DAO and the decision to hard-fork to return the DAO funds could have been motivated by a conflict of interest. The ETC community believes that all key aspects of the ETC ecosystem should be decentralized to some extent, including technological functions such as research and development, as well as both community and administration functions, including marketing, Dapp development and governance.

The presentation also highlights the progress made so far by the Ethereum Classic project, notably that plans are underway to remove the so-called “difficulty bomb” to ensure Proof Of Work (PoW) is viable for miners. Also, the community is looking at a new economic policy and hybrid PoW and Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanisms are being discussed. Finally, new technology is being researched and developed to provide tamper-resistant contracts.

Ethereum Classic is also pushing for community development, with upcoming meetups in Toronto, Shanghai and Melbourne; these meetups are being used to establish ‘ETC local hubs’. Also, relations with universities, startups and companies are under development. The roadmap for the end of this year is to achieve a core ETC developer team and obtain developer support or R&D from third parties.

2017 will see ETC test the PoW, PoS consensus mechanisms as well as testing the optimal monetary policy. Moreover, the meetups will be extended to reach out to more miners and next year should see the deployment of a structure Dapp developer ecosystem.

Then in 2018, the ETC community will then look to execute the PoW, PoS or hybrid consensus mechanism and execute the appropriate monetary policy.

While a roadmap has been formed and a drive for community development underway, ETC has fallen behind Litecoin and Steem, now coming in at the sixth largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. ETC has remained subdued below the $2.00 psychological handle over the past fortnight, displayed by the daily chart below. ETC-USD on the Poloniex exchange has broken below the most recent fractal buy level at $1.60000. A daily close below this level should see the market test support provided by the mid-point of the bullish candlestick, at $1.34, highlighted on the chart below.

Notice that the conversion line (blue) is currently providing resistance at $1.7235. A bullish outlook for Ethereum Classic is only validated once there is a daily close above the conversion line.

The chart below shows that the lagging line is moving below the previous price action, which suggests that further downside moves are to be expected. Furthermore, the trading volume driving Ethereum Classic has been falling after the initial hype created around the cryptocurrency, which also signals more risk to the downside. Therefore, the market is looking to head south with a possible reversal at $1.34 or the psychological $1.00 handle.