The Ethereum altcoin community has released the Declaration of Independence, as 7 mln ETC tokens are dumped into exchanges allegedly by supporters of the competing ETH blockchain to bring down the ETC price.
The 3-page Declaration outlines the main grievances of Ethereum Classic community regarding the hard fork that took place on 20 July 2016. The ETC supporters believe that the fork manifests the developers’ desire to censor Ethereum ecosystem and is a third party intervention in the vital functions of the network. This step violates the very principle of decentralisation laying at the core of Ethereum platform, according to ETC supporters. They consider any interference in the work of the ecosystem as a violation of Ethereum’s democratic principles.
“We believe in the original vision of Ethereum as a world computer that cannot be shut down, running irreversible smart contracts,” the document reads.
The document contains the code of principles according to which the Ethereum Classic alternative ecosystem will function. It has six points:
- The platform will be fully decentralised without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third party interference.
- Ethereum Classic code is the main law. The ledger and all the properties of the distributed ledger protocol will remain unmodified.
- Such options as blockchain fork shall only be permitted if there are no other solutions left.
- Project development can be funded by anyone within the community. It can be done in any currency following a transparent, open and decentralised crowdfunding protocol.
- Any individual may propose project improvements.
- Any individual may use the platform to build decentralised applications, hold crowdsales, create autonomous organisations.
“We likewise will openly resist the ‘tyranny of the majority,’ and will not allow the values of the system to be compromised. As a united community, we will continue to organize for the defense and advancement, as required, for the continuation and assurance of this grand experiment. The Ethereum Classic platform, its code and technology, are now open to the world as Open Source software. It is now freely available for all who wish to improve and build upon it: a truly free and trustless world computer that we together as a community have proven and will continue to prove is anti-fragile.”
In the meantime, some Ethereum Classic users report what they consider as an intentional attempt to raid ETC by the developers of the forked Ethereum blockchain. This refers to a large-scale release of ETC tokens to the value of over $10 mln at Poloniex and Kraken exchanges. The tokens were sent by the anonymous “white-hat” hacker team that worked on the rescue of ethers stolen from TheDAO platform. It is reported that the team called “Robin Hood” has passed over 7 mln ETC tokens to the address approved by TheDAO’s curators in order to separate them from the ETH tokens belonging to the post-fork system and return the funds to original owners.
However, the Ethereum Foundation’s representative Alex Van de Sande who took part in the rescue operation, now claims that he has nothing to do with the dump. He informed that he had left the “Robin Hood” team after the Ethereum hard fork. The holders of the largest ETC assets — investor Barry Silbert and miner Chandler Go — also claimed they are not involved.
Both exchanges froze the suspicious transactions until the situation is clarified. After that, the "Robin Hood” team issued a statement claiming that prior to the transaction they had sought the advice of the Swiss consultant firm Bity SA. The team quotes the advice of the consultant not to announce the transaction in advance to avoid speculation on the stock exchanges.
Elena Platonova
