Ethereum Classic history: the DAO hack and the split
The DAO hack
In June 2016 an attacker drained about 3.6 million ether from The DAO, an investment fund built on Ethereum. Most of the community voted to rewrite history and return the money. At block 1,920,000 on 20 July 2016 Ethereum carried out a hard fork, and the network split in two.
“Code is law”
Miners and users who rejected the fork kept running the old chain, which became Ethereum Classic. They argued that a blockchain which reverses transactions when the stakes are high enough is no longer immutable. ETC kept the original history, hack included.
A target for 51% attacks
A smaller network costs less to attack. In January 2019 someone gained control of most of the network’s hashing power and double-spent coins. In August 2020 attackers struck three more times in one month, one attack reorganised more than 4,000 blocks, and exchanges raised their confirmation requirements.
Life after the Merge
In May 2021 ETC reached its all-time high of 167.09 dollars on CoinGecko. When Ethereum moved to proof of stake in September 2022, GPU miners came to ETC, which kept PoW mining, and its hashrate hit a record within hours. The price went the other way and fell after the Merge.