Ethereum is now the king of public chains, but few people know that it has a 'long-lost brother' — Ethereum Classic (ETC), and the birth of this brother originated from a shocking hacker attack.
In 2016, a crowdfunding project called 'The DAO' on Ethereum became a global sensation, raising $150 million worth of Ether at the time, making it one of the largest crowdfunding projects in history.
Everyone fantasized about achieving a decentralized utopia with it.
However, ideals are rich, and reality is thin. Shortly after the project went live, a hacker exploited a code vulnerability and brazenly 'moved away' with approximately $60 million worth of Ether.
This directly stunned the entire Ethereum community.
What to do?
The money was stolen, but according to the blockchain principle of 'code is law', the hacker's actions were 'legal'.
The community was in chaos, and in the end, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin and most community members decided: we can’t tolerate this! Let's do a 'hard fork', roll back the transaction records, and get the money back!
This decision was akin to giving the entire system a 'regret medicine patch', erasing the stolen transaction history.
Most people accepted this solution, forming what we know today as Ethereum (ETH).
But a small number of developers and users who insisted on the 'immutability of blockchain' fundamentalism refused to roll back. They remained on the old, unaltered chain, which became 'Ethereum Classic' (ETC).
A hacker crisis forcefully split one coin into two.
One project, two fates.
This kind of 'breaking apart over a disagreement' drama can only be so vividly played out in the world of cryptocurrency. #加密行业史