Ethereum Classic Agharta hard fork goes live

Ethereum Classic completed the Agharta hard fork yesterday at block 9,573,000. Agharta introduces the same Constantinople and St. Petersburg protocol upgrades previously implemented on Ethereum to the Ethereum Classic network (via ECIP-1056). The fork intends to maximize compatibility and cross-chain communication between Ethereum Classic and its ancestor chain.

Why it matters:

• Ethereum Classic should strive to remain compatible with Ethereum. Maintaining a high level of interoperability lowers the switching cost for developers and projects looking to build on an alternative platform. At the moment, State of the dApps tracks 2,738 total dApps on Ethereum, while Dapp Direct (an application tracker for ETC) only lists 36 total dApps operating on Ethereum Classic.
• Agharta also marked the end of the Geth Classic client. While it was one of the more popular Ethereum Classic clients pre-Agharta, Afri Schoedon of Parity Technologies told Coindesk that, “Geth Classic has hardly been updated since its launch in 2016.” As a result, Parity-Ethereum nodes became the predominant client for Ethereum Classic, hosting around 70% of the network. Client concentration may seem inevitable as operators converge on a single, well-maintained client. But reliance on a single codebase could be an issue if the client code contains a vulnerability (see: the recent attack on Parity Ethereum clients).