Ethereum!
As many of you know, Ethereum is a decentralized, open-source blockchain with smart contract functionality and it is the native cryptocurrency of Ether. Today in this article we will explore the fork history of Ethereum.
I am sure, you might have a question like why fork happens? Right?
Because of Consensus. Yes. In blockchains, consensus is a critical property of the system. Consensus is intended to produce a plan of strict rules without rulers. There is no one person, organization, or group in the consensus system. Mainly fork happens when there is a break in the consensus algorithm, or when miners find any issue with the current consensus rules. There are two types of consensus algorithms.
Proof of Work(PoW)
Proof of Stake(PoS)
we will discuss this separately with a new article, for now, let comes to Ethereum fork history.
Fork
Most hard forks are planned as part of an upgrade roadmap of the current blockchain and consist of updates the community generally agrees to. However, some hard forks lack consensus, which leads to multiple distinct blockchains. Let's discuss some of the hard forks in Ethereum history.
1. Ethereum Classic(ETC)
Ethereum Classic came to be after members of the Ethereum community implemented a time-sensitive hard fork. On July 20, 2016, at a block height of 1.92 million, Ethereum introduced an irregular state change that had taken 3.6 million ether from a smart contract known as The DAO. Almost everyone agreed that the ether taken had been stolen and that leaving it all in the hands of the thief would be a significant detriment to the development of the Ethereum ecosystem as well as the platform itself.
Several people in the ecosystem disagreed with this change, believing immutability should be a fundamental principle of the Ethereum blockchain without exception, and they elected to continue the original chain under the moniker of Ethereum Classic.
2. The Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO)
The DAO was created by Slock.it, to provide community-based funding and governance for projects. The core idea was that proposals would be submitted, curators would manage proposals, funds would be raised from investors within the Ethereum community, and, if the projects proved successful, investors would receive a share of the profits.
The DAO was also one of the first experiments in an Ethereum token. Rather than funding projects directly with ether, participants would trade ether for DAO tokens, use them to vote on project funding, and later be able to trade them back for ether. DAO tokens were available to purchase in a crowd sale that ran from April 5 through April 30, 2016.
Other Notable Ethereum Forks
Ellaism is an Ethereum-based network that intends to use PoW exclusively to secure the blockchain. It has no pre-mine and no mandatory developer fees, with all support and development donated freely by the community. Its developers believe this makes it "one of the most honest pure Ethereum projects" and one that is uniquely interesting as a platform for serious developers, educators, and enthusiasts. Ellasim is a pure smart contract platform. Its goal is to create a smart contract platform that is both fair and trustworthy.
Several other forks have occurred on Ethereum as well. Some of these are hard forks, in the sense that they split directly off of the preexisting Ethereum network. Others are software forks, they use Ethereum's client/node software but ran entirely separate networks without any history shared with Ethereum.
There are also several projects that claim to be Ethereum forks but are actually based on ERC20 tokens and run on the Ethereum network. Two examples of these are EtherBTC (ETHB) and Ethereum Modification (EMOD). These are not forks in the traditional sense, and may sometimes be called "airdrops".
Below are some of the more notable forks that have occurred.
- EthereumFor (ETF)
- EtherZero (ETZ)
- EtherInc (ETI)
That's all for now, I hope you got some ideas about Ethereum fork history.
Thanks for reading this. See you soon with a new article.