How can ETC take over ETH computing power? An article to understand the Ethereum Classic ecosystem

The Ethereum merger is getting closer and closer. Where will the miners go? The ETHPoW dispute... have all become topics of great concern. Among them, the topic of "Ethereum merger, ETC benefits" has also become a focus.

JPMorgan Chase said in a recent report that ETH mining is popular for its profitability, and switching to mining other cryptocurrencies may mean a short-term blow to profits. In addition, a sudden influx of large mining pools into another token may squeeze the profits of existing businesses. Those ETH miners who use ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) equipment have little choice but ETC. ETC miners may be one of the main beneficiaries of this shift, as second-hand mining equipment provided by ETH miners who decide to become ETH 2.0 validators may surge.

There are signs that this shift towards ETC is already happening, with hash rate increasing significantly since mid-July.

According to 2Miners data, as of 9:00 am Beijing time on August 19, the ETC network's total computing power was 45.39TH/s, setting a historical high.

However, the Ethereum Classic network is currently at less than one-tenth the level of development of Ethereum and Cardano, and has not seen meaningful growth in transaction volume since 2018.

Messari analyst Dunleavy tweeted that the transaction volume and users on the ETC chain have remained basically unchanged for many years, and the application does not exist. From the basic indicators, there has been no change in this chain, and developer activity has not produced any meaningful changes.

Crypto KOL 0xAA said: "ETC cannot handle the computing power of ETH miners. The most favorable solution for miners is to conduct a hard fork when the Ethereum mainnet switches to PoS and create an ETH-PoW chain, which is much more valuable than the current ETC chain. After all, the current Ethereum ecosystem is much richer than when ETC forked."

So, how is the development of the Ethereum Classic ecosystem? Golden Finance has sorted it out.

In general, the current development of Ethereum Classic is relatively slow, and the ecosystem is mainly NFT/Metaverse projects, with a small number of DeFi projects. These ecological projects have a small number of users and are not very active.

According to DeFillama data, there are currently only two Ethereum Classic projects (HebeSwap and ETCSwap) with a total locked volume of US$777,000, and they are recent developments, far less than Ethereum.

It is worth noting that recently, the data encryption computing network ADAM officially announced its ecological cooperation with ETC. ADAM entered the ETC ecosystem as the first oracle project.

In addition, the Ethereum Classic Ecosystem Construction Fund is relatively objective. AntPool, a subsidiary of Bitmain, has invested $10 million to support the ETC ecosystem and plans to continue to invest more funds. The $10 million fund will be used for application development and exploration of the ETC main network to improve the overall performance of the network. Bitrise Capital also announced the launch of a $10 million ecological investment fund to support the ecological development of PoW public chains such as ETHPOW, ETC and iPolloverse.