Poloniex launches Ethereum fork coin ETC, causing uproar, Guo Hongcai claims to launch 51% attack

Last week, the Ethereum community successfully executed a hard fork after voting in order to save the losses of The DAO investors, resulting in two Ethereum blockchains.

A project called Ethereum Classic continues to mine the old version of the blockchain (without returning funds to The DAO investors). According to this website, the Ethereum Classic blockchain is now about 4,000 blocks behind the new blockchain.

Now, digital currency exchanges and wallet providers are slowly extending their services to users of the Ethereum Classic blockchain. The support of these institutions has also provided new impetus for miners who mine the old blockchain.

Announced earlier today, Poloniex, the largest digital currency platform by Ethereum trading volume, has now added the Ethereum Classic blockchain’s token, called Classic Ether (ETC).

To do this, Poloniex automatically provided traders who held ether at the time of the fork with an equal amount of Classic ether (ETC).

At press time, the incident has sparked a highly politicized debate as it affects the entire blockchain industry.

So far, it appears that all major Ethereum exchanges will be listing the new token.

It is reported that on the Poloniex platform alone, the trading volume of ETC exceeded 20,000 BTC , with a unit price of approximately 0.001 BTC (or approximately US$0.66).

Data on the exchange showed that the highest price per ETC in 24 hours reached 0.01 BTC (or about $6).

A few hours later, a Bitfinex representative confirmed that the Hong Kong exchange would list ETC on Wednesday.

Shapeshift CEO also said on Twitter that ETC transactions will be launched.

Kraken exchange did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Whether other exchanges will add ETC trading remains to be seen.

Threat of cyber attacks

Complicating matters, however, is the fact that some members of the Ethereum community appear set to take a hostile stance against Ethereum Classic.

Guo Hongcai, a representative of BW.com, one of the largest ethereum mining pools, said on WeChat that his company would use its hash rate to attack the Ethereum Classic network.

Guo explained that the move was in response to Poloniex listing Ethereum fork coins.

Guo Hongcai told CoinDesk that he and other miners attempted to seize a majority of the Ethereum Classic blockchain’s computing power and undermine the integrity of its blockchain history through a 51% attack.

He said that the current computing power has reached 300 GH/s.

When asked why he conducted the attack, Guo cited Google's mantra, stating that software projects should not do evil things.

“We want to make Ethereum more successful,” he said.

However, Bitbank, the company that operates the BW.com Ethereum and Bitcoin mining pool, does not appear to agree with this statement.

The company later said: “Mr. Guo’s remarks and actions do not represent Bitbank or BW. The company expects the Ethereum Foundation to come up with more measures that are beneficial to the majority of the community and the development of Ethereum.”

As of press time, Ethereum Classic’s hashrate is equivalent to 5.7% of Ethereum’s total hashrate at the time of the fork.

Developer Support

Nonetheless, in order to bring long-term value to the Ethereum Classic project, its developers need to establish some advantages for their platform to attract other developers to use the platform to build decentralized applications.

As of press time, at least one major ethereum developer appears willing to support Ethereum Classic.

Gavin Wood, the former CTO of Ethereum and its C++ client developer, said on Twitter that his startup Ethcore will support Ethereum Classic.

Ethereum founder Vitalik did not comment on the matter.