By Adam Tarlowski:
One of the very things blockchain was aimed to fix was the “double-spend” problem. Unless you are David Blaine, spending the same $5 bill twice almost never works, not even at your local corner store. For credit cards and digital payments, double spending became a concern when centralized 0s and 1s behind a screen dictated whether a payment was accepted. Bitcoin and the blockchain set out to fix this.
Ethereum classic – currently the 26th largest coin by market capitalization – suffered another 51% attack just this past week. Hackers spent around $200,000 to acquire the hash power for the attack. The result was a 5-million-dollar blow to the network and added distrust. Since the contentious Ethereum fork, many have regarded its smaller ugly cousin ETC as a burden to the community and akin to Bitcoin Cash.
It isn’t a new issue for community members to have to pick a side when disagreements arise among developers. It wasn’t even close to a 50-50 split when Ethereum underwent its major fork, as almost everyone migrated to the new chain, not the ETC chain. Vitalik Buterin, the brain behind Ethereum just days ago chimed in on the hack and publicly stated, “ETC should just switch to proof of stake. Even given its risk-averse culture, at this point making the jump seems lower-risk than not making it.”
With ETH and DeFi currently leading today’s crypto craze, the optics are horrendous for the Ethereum Classic community making headlines for failing at one of the most important things that blockchain aims to solve. It also raises the concern that hackers can simply purchase the power to conduct their illicit activities. Nonetheless, the safety lies in the size and the pace of upgrades to cryptocurrencies. With the Ethereum train quickly leaving the station and Vitalik as the conductor, it is no surprise investors are jumping on board this provable successful digital choo-choo-chain.