On June 27, one of the most exciting AMA (Ask Me Anything) sessions took place in our group, which has reached 10,000 members. Congratulations to the Satoshi Club Community, we will continue to bring great projects and rewards. We were visited by our friends from Ethereum Classic Project. Our guests were @Classic_Kevin, @royzou, @passepartu and @antsankov.
Prize pool was split as follow: Part 1, $50 to 5 winners; Part 2, $50 to 5 winners; Part 3, $200 to 30 winners.
In this AMA Recap we are trying to summarize some of the most interesting points for you.
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PART 1, INTRODUCTION AND COMMUNITY QUESTIONS
Irina K. | @Satoshi_Club: Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of our AMA series. We have today as guests our friends from Ethereum Classic project @Classic_Kevin, @royzou and @passepartu. Welcome guys and thanks for taking the time to join us.
a.s.: Hi Everyone and thanks for having ETC participants here. 😚
Ciprian Ciubotaru: Hello. 🙂
Roy Zou: Hello. Thanks for having me!
Classic Kevin: Hey everyone 👋🏼
Irina K. | @Satoshi_Club: As you know, in the first part we have questions collected from our community as comments on our platform. But before we begin, please tell us a little bit about yourself and how did you come to be involved in ETC project?
@antsankov welcome.
a.s.: I live in Germany and help in the ETC eco with several administrative and marketing topics. I joined crypto world in the middle of the 2017, as I first heard about Ethereum. I read a lot around this project and then stopped on Ethereum Classic.
Irina K. | @Satoshi_Club: Nice. Thanks for sharing. What did you do before crypto? Other tech projects?
a.s.: No, I am an architecture by profession – offices, hotels, residential.
Alex Tsankov: I was personally a big DeFi enthusiast at the very beginning, working with early MakerDAO. And I thought to myself three things that led to ETC:
- why is there no supply cap of ETH?
- if my DAO gets hacked does that mean developers need to legally ask for a rollback?
- why do we have to switch to Proof of Stake on ETH, when PoW with sidechains works great?
ETC addresses all of these, and I learned more about the community.
Irina K. | @Satoshi_Club: Why in the past? Not a DeFi enthusiast anymore?
Alex Tsankov: I am still a big enthusiast! I think DeFi is the best application we have so far for Ethereum.
Classic Kevin: I’ll start. So I’ve been “in crypto for wow for about ~7 years lol. I was a noob in the start like everyone else but I started mining and getting into how it works for a while-the saw the dao exploit and how it was handled. Started joining the Ethereum classic social media channels and eventually started a bunch of social media accounts devoted to ETC. Volunteer registered on github ETC volunteers.” And that’s how you can join the project! Haha That’s the short version.
Roy Zou: Hi all! I am Roy, now live in Canton, China. I joined Bitcoin community since 2011, and the first organizer of ETC Chinese community and one of very early stage of builders of ETC community along with Arvicco at the beginning of this community since July, 2016. previously advisor of ETCDEV team. And now board of director of Ethereum Classic Cooperative organization.
Alex Tsankov: One interesting thing about etc is that there is no central organization, like the ETH foundation.
Irina K. | @Satoshi_Club: Could you explain how does this help the project?
Alex Tsankov: That’s a great question! So one of the advantages is that it requires building real community consensus to make a change to the code. You need to go to all the sub groups (tribes I call them) in the ETC community to make a change t something. Rather than just got to one organization.
Irina K. | @Satoshi_Club: And is the process the same for every decision? Or just for big ones? I mean, doesn’t this make the decision making process slow?
Alex Tsankov: Yep. It does mean that the process is slow, but it is also more organic. Similar to the way right now it is very tricky to change the HTTP protocol or TCP/IP.
Also the ETC community is very technologically sophisticated. We did three hard forks in the last year, Atlantis, azatlan, and Phoenix, which is more than the ETH community did.
Classic Kevin: It’s the “ungovernance” is actually very similar to bitcoin in that everybody has their own say so and there is no 800 number you can call if you’re back one gets lost or stolen there is no central authority. It’s just Code running on a block chain.
a.s.: Also, as there is no authority, only a protocol, no one can take it down, theoretically.
Irina K. | @Satoshi_Club: No one did so far, so I say it’s a pretty good assumption. For sure many tried.
a.s.: All technical developments go through an ECIP process (Ethereum Classic Improvement Proposal). Yes, it makes the decision slower. And this is the price one pay in a decentralized, permissionless, censorship-resistance.
Classic Kevin: We don’t have a central authority for the government or any group to just shut ETC down. All it is a blockchain. Same with bitcoin. Corporate coins with single companies doing everything they can be shut down with the snap of a finger. When a project is so open and distributed like ETC or BTC all it is volunteers. This is One way in how you minimize trust.
Alex Tsankov: Exactly. Right way to view ETC is: Run your smart contracts on Bitcoin. But I will give two cents: ETH forced people to run code with a bailout in it. And first ETC didn’t have a name. It was just people and miners who said no to running the bailout code. Only after a few months, and signing from ETC Declaration of Independence, did ETC become its own chain.
Q1 from Telegram user @bigbit
How long did it take to decide and what were your thoughts and feelings when deciding that the only solution is a hardfork from Ethereum?
Classic Kevin: It can take years actually. When we introduced the monetary policy it was difficult to convince each party of the proposal. It actually took a very long time. However, if you take some of these non-contentious agreed-upon proposals they are much quicker and easier to pass in ECIP and implement in the clients.
Roy Zou: It is not a decision for ETC community to do a hardfork for what happened at that time, we just chose to stay at the original chain.
a.s.: There is misunderstanding in the crypto world. First there was Ethereum network. After the DAOhack, a flaw in the smart contract interacting with the network, the community decided to hard fork. The minority, who hold to the original philosophy was named Ethereum Classic. The hard forked is the Ethereum (ETH). And if we get more philosophically, there were two “groups” from the day one of the Ethereum and it came into an appearance with this event.
Irina K. | @Satoshi_Club: Got it. Actually this is not very well known. The general belief I think is that ETC is a hardfork from ETH, not the other way around.
Alex Tsankov: Yes, my personal belief is that it is good there is ETH and ETC. Because there are some smart people on both sides. Some people in ETH say they achieved majority hash power to do rollback, so it is ok. But in ETC we stick to the original principle of immutability, which is why blockchain exists.
Classic Kevin: ETC founders “originals”: Elaine Ou, MikeyB, Arvicco, Igor, Bitnovosti, and more I’m forgetting of the top of my head, anyone else you can Roy. You can always look at the early contributors on the GitHub for the Ethereum project.
Classic Kevin: Time preference. Rome wasn’t built in a day. And ETC teams and parties received NONE of the financial benefits Ethereum had: premine, ICO, dumped free post dao ETC etc. Blockchain’s are about minimizing trust. Ethereum is doing this absolutely poorly.
Q2 from Telegram user @juaniss
Is Gödel Labs a commercial project? Does it bring profits and sustain the main project?
Roy Zou: Gödel Labs is an incubator of Blockchain. We contribute to foster the ecosystem of community. But it is not just focus on ETC, it is broadly the whole Blockchain community.
Irina K. | @Satoshi_Club: oh, ok. Is this an ETC initiative? Or how is it related to ETC?
Roy Zou: of course, ETC is one of main field Gödel Labs will invest.
Irina K. | @Satoshi_Club: But is it operational? Does it have any project/ incumbents?
Roy Zou: Gödel Labs will invest in protocol-level projects for ETC. And previously we announced we will build a dedicated team for ETC. Gödel Labs is already doing the investment, education, and community building stuff in China.
Irina K. | @Satoshi_Club: Got it. So it’s still work in progress it seems, there aren’t any projects currently incubated by Gödel Labs? Quick questions: why Gödel labs? Where did the name come from?
Roy Zou: Multigeth client support, and ETC community building include ethereumclassic.cn.
Classic Kevin: A very strong presence over in China for ETC.
Alex Tsankov: ETC is a very international project. Our main development centers are: USA, which is where I am, EU, and China. Many different viewpoints.
Roy Zou: Kurt Gödel’s theories deeply shape how I look at this world. For memorize him, we named company as Gödel Labs.
Classic Kevin: Yeah it’s pretty crazy actually. How many other projects can you realistically has this type of distribution of development teams? Or developers? that’s one thing that separates Ethereum classic as a legitimate project from the other 2000 coins listed on CMC.
Not to mention the outreach and Community engagement and growth, Roy is one of the reasons why this project succeeded as it did in the very beginning.
Q3 from Telegram user @Brainchest
The success of ETH in that they chose the right position in 2016 and made a rollback or do they have the right management? But my question is as follows. Do you plan to make changes to the management and more successful promotion of ETC.? After all, you have a more powerful argument for investors. You are true to this promise not to change the code itself.
Roy Zou: I think I am the first Chinese to tell Chinese community about the ETC and start a consortium in Sept, 2016 to support ETC, along with the main companies and organizations in China, including the biggest names in the ecosystem.
Classic Kevin: I would encourage everybody that wants to get an understanding of how diverse this ecosystem of participants actually is (traders, investors, developers, minors, exchanges, any service providers. Then watch the first summit in Hong Kong. You’ll be quite shocked. The Hong Kong summit in 2017.
Irina K. | @Satoshi_Club: When is the summit?
a.s.: For this year there is no one due to global situation.
Roy Zou: I translated the Declaration of Ethereum Classic Independent and co-work with other members to deploy the economic policy.
a.s.: By the way there are in other languages, too, which could be found on the ETC subreddit on the right sidebar.
Alex Tsankov: I personally think the ETH community is doing something wrong by pushing Proof of Stake so hard.
I believe in the strategy of a solid base main chain with good security properties. And then you use smart contracts with sidechains to increase capacity on the network. Proof of stake has so many potential issues people don’t talk about, and ETH foundation hides. Like here is one: with proof of work, the computational work and mining is timeless, anyone can see and compute it, it can never be faked. With proof of stake, if you get 50%+ of the network you can rewrite all history in one go.
This is very unfair to users and Dapp developers who may not believe in Proof of Stake; so that is why ETC is picking up traction right now.
a.s.: First the etc website was revamped. Now, I (German/Russian) and several other doing translations into other languanges. The planned languanges are also listed on github. With this the broader audience can be reached, too.
Alex Tsankov: The marketing strategy for ETC is very developer focused right now. We want ETh developers to know they can deploy their dapp on ETH and ETC with the same codebase. This will build users, and applications which will lead to more investment.
Irina K. | @Satoshi_Club: Are there any running applications now on ETC?
Alex Tsankov: Yes, I run the biggest DeFi app on ETC. It is called commonwealth. gg it is a peer to peer savings fund that holds over 12,000 ETC in its smart contract. I also maintain a website dappdirect. net which lists out stats for all running ETC dapps, like dapp radar.
a.s.: yes, it is one of them, but more can be found here https://ethereumclassic.org/ecosystem/apps-and-protocols.
Alex Tsankov: …because for a long time people thought etc was just for trading, but I was curious if it could be used for smart contracts as well as eth and it works very well! Gas fees are very low right now on the network too. It is cheaper to use ETC than eth right now. 😁 If anyone reading is an eth developer, I would suggest they try to deploy an app on ETC and see what it’s like. They will be impressed.
Irina K. | @Satoshi_Club: What about the management part of the question? Are you happy with how the things are going, or do you plan any changes?
Alex Tsankov: Yes, I have an ECIP I made. To change the hash algorithm on ETC to one called “keccak256”. This is much higher performance than even Bitcoin Sha256, over 4x more hash per unit of energy. So I believe that if the ETC community chooses to adopt it, there is a chance ETC could become the highest hashpower chain on the planet, of all PoW chains. Higher hashpower = more secure network. This is the core thesis of the bitcoin white paper itself.
I have a talk I gave in Vancouver, it is 40 minutes https://medium.com/@antsankov/ecip-1049-why-ethereum-classic-should-adopt-keccak256-for-its-proof-of-work-algorithm-e45aee32d8a9.
https://ethereumclassic.org/press/conferences.
a.s.: And this is also tested under the tech people.
Classic Kevin: So based on blockchain principles and what makes blockchains different from using regular databases like mysql or anything else is the fact that chains are not meant to be intervened upon especially when the issue happened on a Dapp and not the protocol. The HF was a bailout plain and simple for the investors and interest groups of the SlockIt DAO.
From a blockchain perspective they’ve set a precedent to do “we’ll rescue you forks” and violated immutability for the sake of a smart contract. So wrong decision. They have the worst management. First of all, their decisions are made up of a small group of people and they are still being led in a moses-driven leadership with Vitalik. Changes in management for ETC IMO are unnecessary as there is no hierarchy and there is no leader. Companies that participate in the project have every right to structure their management the way they want but not the open source project.
Over time we will catch up with their social media presence, and begin to level out as time goes on. The promise is not only not to change the code but to minimize the trust we have in those parties that will change the code for good or bad. Immutability is a spectrum and 100% of chains are not totally immutable.
Security first. Ethereum classic development has always been slow, methodical, and diligent never overpromising things like shad ing or 10000 tps or anything else you’ve heard.
Q4 from Telegram user @Magoy12
With the Agharta upgrade live, ETC is now more compatible with ETH. What is the reason for or benefit of maintaining a high level of interoperability with ETH?
Alex Tsankov: This is good question. I tell people this: ETH and ETC have different consensus algorithms but the actual application layer is the same between them. So think of it like SQL. Eth and Etc are like PostgreSQL and MySQL, with different teams and philosophies. But you can use the same queries on both of them.
We will maintain compatibility with ETH as long as it is beneficial to do so for ETC. If ETH does something crazy, we will choose not to merge it into ETC.
a.s.: Also, as the Ethereum Classic (ETC) network and Ethereum (ETH) share the same base code (Ethereum) and due to it, it is easier for developers to move to the Ethereum Classic and getting its blockchain features. After this upgrade and the Ethereum switching its consensus mechanism to PoS, the both network will go its own road, but could benefit from each other in the future.
https://etherplan.com/2019/07/23/ethereum-classic-vs-ethereum-2-0-what-is-the-difference/8425/.

Classic Kevin: Atlantis, Agharta, and Phoenix were a series of pre agreed upon, non-contentious, necessary upgrades to attain a parity protocol with the ethereum protocol, bridging a lot of gaps for dapp developers essentially making it incredible easy to port your existing dapp do ETC like i.e. Maker, or any project.
We’re already starting to see this with CHainbridge, Ethermint, and POA ETCBridge and a lot more. Another one of the main reasons was the easier accessibility to the immense degree of tooling in Ethereum that wasn’t available to ETC.
Q5 from Telegram user @CryptoLove97
How are developmental changes made on ETC network? Do you plan to transition to PoS for scaling your network like ETH is Progressing to RTH 2.0 (Casper)?
Classic Kevin: Trust me before it was so difficult to develop applications it discouraged a lot of early development.
Alex Tsankov: No plans to switch to PoS for a very long time in Ethereum Classic. However, I know some people in the community that say: If PoS is proven, over 10 years, same way Proof of Work has been proven since 2008, then maybe we can consider migrating ETC to it.
Classic Kevin: Any changes whether their developmental or on the social level or having to do with anything really about the project go through the ECIP process. Proof of stake has not been battle tested and does not solve the byzantine general’s problem which is basically the point of Blockchains haha. In the beginning there was talk about doing a hybrid but that was very short-lived because proof of work has demonstrated to be the most secure mechanism and actually solves the byzantine general’s problem. By separating node operators and miners. In POS that is not possible.
Alex Tsankov: Agreed, the ETH Foundation makes it seem like PoS is simple, common sense improvement. The reality is that it is like changing the engine of a moving jet, with another jet we don’t even know works! And why should dapp developers and defi developers and users have to worry about their business breaking because Vitalik wants to experiment? ETC provides solid foundation to build a DeFi business on. All dapps are businesses, fundamentally.
Classic Kevin: Take Segwit for example. That was alll due to the node operators. Only had I believe ~30% miner support but guess what now we have segwit on bitcoin all mostly done on a voluntary basis.
Alex Tsankov: One other note: I believe Proof of Work is infinitely scalable.
Classic Kevin: In my opinion and proof of stake the rich get richer and the poor stay where they’re at. I would never be in a position to advocate for a change to that mechanism but potentially a hybrid if that’s still in the research phase which I don’t believe it is.
a.s.: Basically copying the current system in the world.
Alex Tsankov: Yes:
Proof of Stake = Rich get Richer by having Money
Proof of Work = Make money by doing hard work.
Classic Kevin: Also with proof of stake with the validator’s or Block producers or stake pool operators has really shown to be rather centralized. With mining if you really want to you could buy the equipment necessary. With the other system that’s just not possible unless you can accrue more capital than the whales ahead of you.
Alex Tsankov: Oh also one other note: many in DeFi community don’t like Proof of Stake, because the yield competes with apps on the platform. Think this way: if ETH PoS offers 2% yield, then nobody will use apps like Compound or MakerDAO if they do less than 2%. It is basically like another Federal Reserve.
Irina K. | @Satoshi_Club: Nice. Thank you guys. I think that on this optimistic note we’ll close the doors of part 1 and proceed to part 2.
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PART 2, TELEGRAM COMMUNITY LIVE QUESTIONS
The chat was open for 2 minutes; a lot of questions were posted by the Satoshi Club community. Our guest chose some of them, but ONLY first five were rewarded.
Q1 from Telegram User @CryptoLove97
Since, Majority of Hash Power Rests with ETH, How Prone is ETC for a 51% Attack & Double Spending? And, how would you Prevent this?
a.s.: It is not a bug. It is by design so. More can be read here: https://medium.com/ethereum-classic/51-attacks-arent-a-network-failure-81a7e197bfd9.
Q2 from Telegram User @Nickkiii
What was the reason (besides EVM compatibility) behind breaking immutability with the Phoenix hard fork?
Alex Tsankov: This is a controversial opinion, spread by one developer in the ETC community.
Q3 from Telegram User @Temidayo16
What does ETC have to offer that another blockchain can’t rival?
Alex Tsankov: Very simple: we are the only proof of work, turing complete, smart contract platform. Every other smart contract chain is Proof of Stake. Also we are very decentralized, similar to Bitcoin.
Classic Kevin: well I’d point you to the roadmaps. Point you to ETC being an authentic public blockchain, not a corporate coin or #1300 CMC coin with 2 devs and nothing else. One thing people overlook is the fact that ETC is light years ahead of other project in terms of infrastructure maturity, ecosystem development, and social reach, authentic use i.e. tx per day, active addresses, etc. Scaling will likely come in the form of sidechains (already being researched and several PoCs have been delivered) and state channels similar to Bitcoin’s lightning network time lock transactions. These are already in production. 😊😊
Anything that can be done without sacrificing security first and unproven/untested technology. Remember no move fast and break things. Gotta get it right the first time. 😉
Q4 from Telegram User
About ETC goals of the year.
a.s.: There are many goals for this year, but here is an abstract from (link follows by mods):
- To reach out to the non-english ETC social channels to translate the English version of the https://ethereumclassic.org/
- LLVM Instruction scheduler and performance optimizations / JSON-RPC devp2p Wire protocol specification and reference implementation research and possible design
- Updates to ECIP process via ECIP-1000 discussion.
- Astor experimental testnet SHA3 consensus algo research review / Mining Algorithm Discussion: Astor SHA3 Change, DAG reduction, No Change
My personal are #1, #4. But it does not mean, that I don ‘t like others, too. 🙂
https://ethereumclassic.org/knowledge/roadmap.
Classic Kevin: they have some amazing things in the work. https://etccooperative.org/roadmap.
Q5 from Telegram User @Faustom
Currently this is the year of DeFis, my question is what has Ethereum Classic done in this regard?
Alex Tsankov: The biggest thing ETC can do right now in terms of DeFi is:
- Market to ETH developers so they launch their dapp on both chains.
- Work on wallets like Saturn Wallet, or alpha wallet, that make it easier for users to use ETC DeFi apps.
Q6 from Telegram User @Ketz23
DeFi is one of the hottest topic in the blockchain space right now. Can $ETC share your opinions on DeFi with us? Do you think that DeFi will disrupt the existing financial system? What is Unification approach towards the DeFi sector?
Alex Tsankov: DeFi is the *killer app* of crypto. Because it solves serious problems with the financial system. I live in New York; I am very familiar with finance applications.
They are all very slow, expensive to use, lots of regulations, closed off to the world. With DeFi, now the whole world has equal access to the market, no matter where you are on earth at any time. This is a huge opportunity. We will see stocks, bonds, real estate all integrated into DeFi apps in next 5 years. ETC accrues value from this, because in order to use the defi apps, you need to pay gas fees, and buy ETC off the market to pay for these fees.
Q7 from Telegram User @kun4321
What is ETC’s plan to increase its scalability?
Alex Tsankov: We believe in a rock solid base chain, and then we have sidechains on top.
Q8 from Telegram User @JackRipYourNeck
Crypto technology is here more than ten years. Where do you think etc will be ten years from now, in terms of organic growth? Thx!
Alex Tsankov: I believe there will only be 4 main blockchains in the future. ETC will be one, because it is decentralized, stable, good monetary policy, works well.
Q9 from Telegram User @Ayoub41
As we know etc is not a good investment for short term. What about long term?
Classic Kevin: Long term is perfect. ETC is not a pump and dump where the devs will leave when price hits $X or $Y. It’s very much demonstrated to be a long term one.
Q10 from Telegram User @Harsha_prabath1
What are ways by which ETC network generates profit/revenue to maintain project. What is your revenue model? How it can be win situation for both investors and project? Adoption is one of the important factor that all sustainable blockchain projects should focus to be more attractive in the investors’ eyes. What ETC network has done and plans to do to achieve real world adoption?
Classic Kevin: Right now its solely a donation driven process but hopefully with all these goals and milestones and crazy interoperability we can start fundraising for the project in different ways. I really like the Gitcoin integration.
Q11 from Telegram User @araceley
Why is ETC a way better platform than ETH for DeFi projects?
Alex Tsankov: ETC has cap of 210mil coins, ETH is unlimited right now. If you want unlimited money, just use fiat. 😄
Q12 from Telegram User @Monica_012
Why anyone should invest in ETC for long term investment? What is greatest strength of ETC? Tell us some such feature that people / users should invest in ETC and this project will get the support of community.
a.s.: A short answer is a computing system. A long version https://etherplan.com/2019/07/02/what-is-and-how-does-ethereum-classic-work-in-laymans-terms/8106/.

Alex Tsankov: ETC is very undervalued right now. It is $5.90 compared to $200 for ETH. If you believe even ETC is 1/10 as good as ETH, then you believe price should be $20.
Classic Kevin: ETH= unpredictable, governed (subject to change) inflationary monetary policy.
ETC= predictable, algorithmic, deflationary mon. pol.
Q13 from Telegram User @DtKross
Is Ethereum Classic easy for new users? What are the highlights that attract users of Ethereum Classic?
Classic Kevin: It’s as easy as ethereum. You may volunteer in any capacity you may offer or bring to the table. If you can write a contract on ethereum you can on ETC.
Q14 from Telegram User @minseo2
I am a talented developer with knowledge of Solidity, SQL and other programming languages. How do you support your developers? Are there available grant programs? Any upcoming developers workshop I should know of?
a.s.: Hey. There are these tasks with bounties funded by ETC Core, a dev team by ETC Labs, currently https://gitcoin.co/explorer?network=mainnet&applicants=ALL&order_by=-_val_usd_db&org=etclabscore.
For workshops please ask on the etc discord in the dev channel: https://discordapp.com/invite/HW4GckH.
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PART 3, QUIZ AND INFO
As usual, for the third part, Satoshi Club Team asked the chat 4 questions about Ethereum Classic. A link to a Quiz form were sent into the chat. Participants had 10 minutes to answer.
30 users with correct answers were rewarded.
1. What is Ethereum Classic?
- – only a permissionless network
- – only a decentralized network
- – only a computing platform for smart contracts
- -> all above
2. Why does Ethereum Classic stick to PoW consensus mechanism and not to PoS? because …
-> it was seen as the most resilient mechanism till now (e.g. of Bitcoin)
3. What language are ETC Smart Contracts written in?
-> Solidity
4. What is an example of a node software that CANNOT run Ethereum Classic?
-> NGINX
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