Today, San Francisco based Ethereum Classic Labs (etclabs.org) announced the coming implementation of the Atlantis hard fork, a major upgrade to the Ethereum Classic Blockchain (ETC). Atlantis adopts Ethereum’s “Byzantium” protocol upgrade on ETC.
*Atlantis is being implemented on the testnet, and it will be administered on the mainnet at block height #8,772,000, estimated to arrive in months ahead. The goal of Atlantis is to increase the functionality and stability of ETC. The upgrade also ensures compatibility with Ethereum to promote greater collaboration between the sibling blockchains.
Atlantis is one of several projects being implemented by ETC Labs and its Core Development Team, including increased tooling for developers and protocol-level improvements. Last week, the team released Jade Service Runner, the first of the Jade Suite of tools for ETC. And last month the team released OpenRPC, which improves the dApp development experience.
“We are excited to have such advancement in quality tools and fundamental building blocks to build on,” stated Shane Jonas, ETC Labs Core Development team member. “ETC Labs has been critical in the development of the future tools and infrastructure of Ethereum Classic, and we are committed to maintaining the core principles of the community.”
The Atlantis upgrade consists of 10 Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), including improvements to stability (EIP 100), Op-code upgrades (EIP 140, 211, and 214), precompiled contracts (EIP 198), precompiled contracts to improve zk-Snarks (EIP 196 and 197), performance-related improvements (EIP 161 and 170) and enhanced security (EIP 658).
“This is a great step forward,” said Jake Lang, a member of both the ETC Labs Core Development Team and the ETH EWASM Team. “Ethereum Classic is able to increase compatibility with Ethereum. Our team is committed to greater collaboration across chains.”
According to the Bob Summerwill, Executive Director of the Ethereum Classic Cooperative, “Stakeholders in the ETC community have been eagerly awaiting the upgrade, because it will enable maximum compatibility across the Ethereum and Ethereum Classic networks.”
*UPDATED TO REFLECT THE DELAYED IMPLEMENTATION TIME