Analysis: Bitmain clearly supports the hopes and difficulties of ETC's revival

Wu said the author|Colin Wu

Editor of this issue|Colin Wu

At the Miami Mining Conference, Bitmain’s AntPool said it has invested $10 million to support the Ethereum Classic ecosystem and plans to continue investing more. The initial investment of 10 million US dollars will be used for application development and exploration of the Ethereum Classic mainnet to improve the overall performance of the network. Bitmain will also accept ETC payments for all of its Antminer models. Previously, it has been reported in the industry that Bitmain founder Ketuan Zhan intends to support Ethereum Classic.

Affected by the near merger of Ethereum (the developer said it is tentatively scheduled for September), ETC Ethereum Classic, known as the "Doomsday Chariot", has indeed begun to skyrocket. The reason for the rise is largely due to the belief that ETC can undertake the computing power, some users and even the ecology after the merger of Ethereum. Bitmain and Core Action are the main manufacturers of Ethereum ASIC mining machines, and the latter has transformed into a traditional GPU. Therefore, Bitmain must also carry the banner of supporting ETC for its own mining machines.

As Ethereum Classic ETC, which chose not to roll back after Ethereum was hacked, there has been no shortage of big-name supporters. From DFG, the earliest strong capital in China, to DCG, the first encryption group holding Grayscale, CoinDesk, Genesis, and Foundry, but only won the title of "Doomsday Chariot", what is the reason, and Bitmain's support can Whether it is successful or not, the author of this article summarizes as follows after communicating with many ecologists:

1. In the past, ETC was supported by DFG and DCG in China and the United States, but in the end it did not cause too much trouble, and there were even some contradictions. Whether it will continue to support vigorously after the merger is currently unknown. DCG is currently going to solve the big troubles such as Grayscale and Genesis, and whether it still has the power to support ETC has not yet revealed its traces. DFG is no longer possible.

2. The ETC developer team is very scattered. There is no spiritual leader and centralized force like Vitalik, so it will be relatively slow and inefficient to promote some things. At present, almost no mature projects of Ethereum have entered the ETC ecological deployment. If there is a mature agreement to enter in the follow-up, it will be a more important part, and it will also drive the participation of other projects.

3. Large-scale miners and mining machine manufacturers are currently most actively hoping to promote the power of the ETC ecology. It is rumored that nearly 5 billion US dollars of mining equipment have been idled after the merger of Ethereum. However, because the mining industry is completely different from the public chain ecology, miners do not have the ability to create a public chain ecology. In the heyday of Bitmain, BCH, which was backed by all its wealth and money, could hardly be called a success. A small $10 million to support ETC may just be a test of the water.

The problem that still exists is that at present, the computing power of any leading miner enters ETC, which may immediately cause the attack risk of 51% of the computing power concentration. Therefore, it is also possible that after the launch of the Filecoin main network, the miners will launch their own forked chains that control the disk.

At present, Bao Erye has been engaged in heated discussions in the group, but the opinions in the group are quite different. For example, the old miner Xingkong said why it is necessary to fork Ethereum instead of supporting other public chains that use POW or graphics card mining (including kadena starcoin aleo ckb conflux, etc.). However, due to the low ability of miners to build public chains and ecology, the probability of success is not high.

Summary: Because miners obviously don't want the machines to be abandoned, they are the most willing to participate in the construction of the ETC ecology. They have funds, but they do not have the experience and ability to build a public chain ecology. They are more likely to be POW ETH with their own fork and controllable disk. ETC developers are relatively decentralized, and it is difficult to actively and efficiently organize and coordinate the forces of all parties. However, ETC is still the best place to undertake ETH POW users/community/funds. The key is whether the existing ETH mature agreement and the driving organizers like CZ SBF will enter. However, SBF seems to have expressed no interest in POW/mining machine factories. Whether the Binance department can intervene may be a more important key.