Ethereum Classic Successfully Activates Atlantis Hard Fork

• Toshendra Kumar Sharma
• September 13, 2019

Ethereum Director of Developer Relations, Yaz Khoury, announced in a Twitter post about Ethereum Classic (ETC) activating the Atlantis hard fork. This has been possible due to the efforts of the team behind Ethereum Classic, which aims at improving the functionality and compatibility of the altcoin with Ethereum. Khoury congratulated the project with the development, and stated, “Congratulations @eth_classic on the successful activation of the Atlantis Hardfork! Was one of the longest debates to reach consensus along with a lot of the immutability politics. Learned a lot about the beauty of decentralization and a distributed community.”

 

Ethereum Classic has enacted a system-wide software upgrade as part of a bid for increasing the interoperability with Ethereum, the blockchain that split in 2016 from its codebase. Dubbed “Atlantis,” the hard fork will require all software users to upgrade their clients to stay within the rules of the network. According to a press report released by Ethereum Classic Labs, the startup of Ethereum, 10 Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) were included in Atlantis to improve performance and stability and to add opcodes, precompiled contracts, zK-SNARKs, and enhanced security. Terry Culver, the CEO of Ethereum Classic Labs, commented as follows:

 

“The hard fork clearly shows we are committed to compatibly and working with ethereum. What we would like to do is find ways to make the two chains support one another.”

 

Ethereum Classic is a public, blockchain-based, open-source distributed computing platform that features smart contract functionality. It is a smarter blockchain. It is a community, a network, and a cryptocurrency that takes digital assets further. Apart from following people to send value to each other, Ethereum Classic allows for complex contracts that operate autonomously to be modified or censored.

 

In June this year, the Ethereum Classic community announced that its Atlantis hard fork is in the testing stage. According to previous news reports, the update is scheduled for September this year. To bring about transparency in certain aspects of the upgrade, Ethereum Classic Labs had actively contributed to the Atlantis project by launching an Ether/ETC interoperability tool as part of the Metronome Validator Network software.

 

As planned earlier, ETC has successfully performed the Atlantis hard fork in accordance with the previously estimated time- between 12 and 13 September 2019- at a block height of 8,772,000. As commented by ETC Labs in June to Coin telegraph, “The community has had a number of meetings to discuss timing, scope, and involvement, and we have decided on the direction and timing of the Atlantis release.”

 

It was reported earlier in June that developers and contributors were considering to put the hard fork at block number 8.75 million, as they predicted that it would run on 15 September. But subsequently, Ethereum Classic Labs moved to increase the block number to have the projected update during the week when more involved parties would be present to discover and deal with any issues that may arise.

 

This hard fork will improve security and will take the community concerns into account. It will be a no-rush update as it will ensure the compatibility of Ethereum Classic with Ethereum. This will simplify the interaction with sibling blockchains.

 

Following its announcement about the hard fork, ETC has gained support from a wide array of industry players including OKEx, the Malta-based cryptocurrency exchange. The support of the exchanges was revealed on 10 September. There was also a warning that it will handle resume services and related technical issues after the ETC mainnet becomes stable. Recently, the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex announced that it would also extend its support to Atlantis.