Ethereum Classic Just Upgraded Its Network Protocol Making Mining Still Viable

There have been a lot of rumors lately when it comes to Ethereum mining and the mining of Ethereum Classic – mostly about them not making any sense. However, Ethereum Classic (ETC) has proved all of these sayings wrong with the new protocol upgrade that will ensure that mining remains viable in the future.

The news came from ETC Block Explorer’s data yesterday. According to it, the fork which is dubbed ECIP-1041 has eliminated the well-known “Difficulty Bomb” feature from the ETC network at block 5,900,000. For ones who don’t know anything about this, the ‘bomb’ was a component of the original Ethereum (ETH) code that was designed to exponentially increase the difficulty of the mining – to a point where it would be impractically slow, triggering the need to transition to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm.

The Ethereum Classic (ETC) cryptocurrency formed after Ethereum hard-forked from the original blockchain in 2016 over some disagreements. The latest protocol upgrade won’t result in an AirDrop nor in the creation of a new token.

In October 2017, Ethereum tried to postpone the difficulty bomb by over a year as the Foundation continues to lay the groundwork for the transition to a hybrid PoS system known as Casper.

The good thing about this is the following…

Once Ethereum moves to PoS, the Ethereum Classic (ETC) network (which has no plans to transition to PoS whatsoever) could potentially hope to inherit a significant part of the mining hash power dedicated to ETH in its current form.

This debate (PoS-PoW) is what divides the crypto community. One Brazilian researcher recently calculated that it could take $55 million to hack Ethereum Classic’s network in order to make $1 billion in profit, showing that the network’s PoW algorithm is more vulnerable to a 51% attack than previously assumed.