ETCUSD
Ethereum Classic / US Dollar
crypto

Ethereum Classic is a decentralized computing platform designed to execute smart contracts, which are applications that run as programmed without the possibility of censorship or third-party interference. It is a distributed network consisting of a blockchain ledger, a native cryptocurrency (called ETC), and an ecosystem of on-chain applications and services. Ethereum Classic is the legacy chain that split from Ethereum following a contentious hard fork, known as The DAO fork, in Jul. 2017. Like its sister chain, Ethereum Classic features an execution engine optimized for smart contract processing (known as the Ethereum Virtual Machine or EVM) and a Proof of Work (PoW) consensus system. While it shares some aspects with Ethereum, Ethereum Classic offers a more defined monetary policy and inflation schedule. Ethereum Classic (ETC) kept most of the original Ethereum technical features and architecture. It remains an account-based blockchain (as opposed to Bitcoin's UTXO model) consisting of external accounts, which are controlled by a user's private keys, and contract accounts, which are managed by contract code. External contracts can create and sign messages to send to both types of accounts, while contract accounts can only execute transactions automatically in response to a message they have received. The latter are what are known as smart contracts and enable the programmability of decentralized applications (dApps). Ethereum Classic also continues to use the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), the smart contract execution engine. It is a Turing-complete virtual machine featuring a specific language "EVM bytecode," typically written in a higher-level language called Solidity or others such as the Python-based Vyper. Every operation on the EVM requires computational effort and memory. Ethereum Classic node operators and miners provide these resources to application developers and network users in exchange for gas. The fee to make transactions or execute smart contract operations on ETC is (gas price) * (gas limit), and fees are paid to miners for including your transactions in a block. The gas limit is the maximum amount of gas users are willing to spend on a transaction, whereas the gas price is the cost users are willing to pay for each gas unit. A normal transaction on the network costs 21,000 gas but costs more if you are trying to execute something more complex as that requires more computational power. Users can also speed up their transactions by raising the gas price since that will incentivize miners to include the transaction(s) in the next block to receive those fees. Ethereum Classic (ETC) uses Ethash as its Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm. New blocks are generated every 15 seconds, on average, and the current miner reward for each new block found is 3.2 ETC which is reduced by 20% every 5 million blocks (about 2.4 years). ETC will be mineable until around 2070 when miners will reach the soft supply cap of between 210 million and 230 million. In addition to miner rewards, ETC rewards miners for discovering "uncle blocks". Uncle blocks are valid blocks that arrived too late, meaning another miner already solved the PoW and claimed that block height's reward. This practice aims to decrease mining centralization, reduce the chance of unintentional forks, and boost network security. Every new block can contain at most two uncle blocks. Uncle block rewards are 3.125% of the miners' reward or 0.125 ETC.