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ETC

Ethereum Classic · Proof-of-work smart-contract L1 (Ethash, the pre-DAO-fork Ethereum chain)

43 /100
T5Impaired · #57 of 77
No engine yetTwo-way ↘low likelihoodReviewed Oct 23, 2026

Capped at T5: a lost fork of ETH, so security counts at most 1 and the tier cannot rise above Impaired.

DemandSoundnessDurability
9 of 4523 of 4011 of 15

Key facts

SupplyFloat 100% of issued supply
  • Circulating 158.8M, 75%
  • Not yet issued 51.9M, 25%
  • Max 210.7M
FDV / market cap
1.0x
$1.2B / $1.2B
Market cap
$1.2B
Price $7.69, 7d −3.2%

Market data: CoinGecko, Oct 24, 2026. Scores reviewed Oct 23, 2026.

Assessment

The chain that kept Ethereum's pre-DAO-fork ledger and lost the contest for Ethereum's role in 2016: Ethereum kept the users, developers and value, so ETC's adoption counts at most 1 here. It has a capped supply and a ten-year record of refusing rollbacks, but no longer an open mining market: F2Pool has mined a majority of blocks for at least a month and one client runs the network, so immutability rests on a single operator's restraint. Economic use is near zero (~$7.7K of fees a year, ~$121K of DeFi) and access is an ~$85M OTC trust.

How value reaches holders

None by design: fees and the block reward go to miners; no burn, no staking. Supply follows ECIP-1017 (adopted 2017): the block reward falls 20% every 5M blocks toward a 210.7M ceiling; era 6 began at block 25,000,000 on Jul 22, 2026 at 1.6384 ETC a block (~3.8M ETC a year, ~2.4% of the 158.8M issued), next cut at block 30,000,000 (~Sep 2028). Fees are negligible (~$7.7K over the trailing year), so miner revenue (~$30M a year) is ~99.97% subsidy. The Olympia draft ECIPs (1111 to 1121) would add an EIP-1559 base fee paid into an on-chain treasury rather than burned; none has an activation block

Score anatomy

Demand

9 / 45: the stronger of two routes, plus adoption

Why would anyone hold it: does value reach the token, and is the network or product used today?

Holder routing engine input
0

All fees and the 1.6384 ETC block reward go to miners; ETC never adopted EIP-1559, so nothing is burned (the Olympia base-fee ECIPs are drafts with no activation block)

Nothing reaches holders by designhigh confidenceHow this is scored

Revenue reality engine input
0

Fees were ~$7.7K over the trailing year (DefiLlama, Oct 22, 2026), about $20 a day across ~12K transactions

Under $0.5M/yr, or emissions-subsidized onlyhigh confidenceHow this is scored

Monetary usage engine input
1

Gas only: DeFi TVL ~$121K and stablecoins ~$72K on ETC (DefiLlama, Oct 23, 2026); BitPay does not list ETC and no third-party collateral use was found

Pays its own network's fees (gas never counts higher, whatever the size of the economy)high confidenceHow this is scored

Adoption ×3
1

Lost fork of ETH: ~$7.7K fees TTM (-67%), $121K DeFi TVL and ~12K tx/day

Marginal or fading: negligible use for its size, usage down 60%+ year on year, or a lost forkhigh confidenceHow this is scored

Two routes, the stronger counts

01234501cash flowmoney
Revenue 0, minus 5 for routing 0 = cash flow 0. Money use 1. The engine is the stronger route: 1.

Soundness

23 / 40

Can a long-term holder trust the rules: supply, float, distribution and control?

Supply discipline ×3
4

210.7M cap (ECIP-1017): 1.6384 ETC a block since block 25,000,000 (Jul 22, 2026, confirmed on-chain), ~3.8M ETC a year or ~2.4% of 158.8M issued; next 20% cut at block 30M (~Sep 2028)

Under 1%/yr net without a hard cap, a hard cap with halvings issuing 1-3%/yr, or zero issuance where binding on-chain token governance could vote to mint morehigh confidenceHow this is scored

Float and unlocks ×1
5

All 158.8M issued ETC circulate with no vesting, escrow or treasury; the Ethereum Foundation's genesis multisig holds ~11 ETC on this chain (read Oct 23, 2026)

Fully vested, no scheduled unlocksmedium confidenceHow this is scored

Distribution ×2
3

Inherits Ethereum's 2014 genesis: 60.1M sold in an open public sale, ~11.9M to early contributors and the Foundation free (7.5% of 158.8M issued); no VC round, no organization directs supply

Insiders received 2-10%, no organization directing over 3%high confidenceHow this is scored

Decentralization and security ×2
0

F2Pool mined 61% of blocks over 7 days and 66% over 30 days (on-chain extraData sample, Oct 23, 2026), so one pool can rewrite or censor the chain; CoreGeth is the only client found

One operator, pool, company or key can halt, rewrite, freeze balances, or upgrade value-holding contracts without delayhigh confidenceHow this is scored

Durability

11 / 15

Is it big, proven and reachable by institutions?

Scale ×1
4

$1.3B market cap (band 4), $55.8M/day median volume (band 4), no flags.

Major: $1-10B market cap and $50M/day+How this is scored

Track record ×1
5

10.3 years since refusing the Jul 2016 DAO fork with no coordinated rollback or halt; the 2019 and Aug 2020 51% reorgs (up to 7,000 blocks) were attacks, scored under security

10+ years with no rollback or coordinated halt in the last 10 yearsmedium confidenceHow this is scored

Institutional access ×1
2

Grayscale ETCG is an OTC trust (10.85M ETC, 6.8% of supply, Jun 30, 2026); no US ETF filing found as of Oct 23, 2026

OTC trust, non-US product, or a pending US filingmedium confidenceHow this is scored

What would move it up

Capped at T5: a lost fork of ETH, so security counts at most 1 and the tier cannot rise above Impaired. The cap lifts only if the condition reverses; the gates below apply after that.

To reach T4 Speculative, every gate is met.

  • Supply 4gate 1(met)

Tier outlook

Two-way ↘low likelihood

  • F2Pool's block share (61% over 7 days, 66% over 30 days to Oct 23, 2026): sustained below 50% lifts security to 1
  • Olympia ECIPs 1111 to 1121: an activation block for a base fee paid to a treasury
  • Any new deep reorg or double-spend after the 2019 and 2020 attacks
  • Fee revenue as the block reward falls 20% at block 30,000,000 (~Sep 2028)

Research report

Oct 23, 2026 · source confidence 80%

Ethereum Classic is the original Ethereum chain, which continued unchanged after Ethereum reversed the 2016 DAO hack. Its monetary policy is fixed: block rewards fall by 20% every five million blocks toward a ceiling of 210.7 million coins, and the latest step, on July 22, 2026, set new issuance at about 3.8 million ETC a year, roughly 2.4% of supply. Distribution inherits Ethereum's 2014 launch, an open public sale in which early contributors and the Ethereum Foundation received about 7.5% of all coins issued since. The concern is security. The network still runs on proof of work, but one pool, F2Pool, mined about 61% of blocks over the past week and about 66% over the past month, so a single operator holds enough hashing power to reorganize or censor the chain. Ethereum Classic suffered three deep reorganization attacks in August 2020, the largest rewriting more than 7,000 blocks. Economic activity is minimal: fees total under $10,000 a year and decentralized finance holds about $121,000, leaving miners almost entirely dependent on the shrinking block reward. Draft proposals known as Olympia would add a base fee paid into an on-chain treasury. US access is limited to an over-the-counter Grayscale trust.

Structure (14 facts)
Chain
Ethereum Classic L1: proof of work (Etchash, ECIP-1099 since Nov 2020), ~13.6 s blocks, EVM with Spiral (Feb 2024) as the last hard fork; no EIP-1559, no proof of stake. Block ~25,591,900 on Oct 23, 2026
Genesis
shares Ethereum's Jul 30, 2015 genesis; became a separate chain on Jul 20, 2016 when it declined the DAO-recovery hard fork
Supply
158,791,399 ETC issued and circulating (CoinGecko, Oct 23, 2026) of a 210.7M ceiling
Emission
ECIP-1017 (activated 2017): block reward cut 20% every 5,000,000 blocks; era 6 began at block 25,000,000 (Jul 22, 2026, 17:12 UTC) at 1.6384 ETC a block (miner balance deltas on blocks 25,592,076 to 25,592,079 show exactly 1.6384 plus fees of 0 to 0.00017 ETC) plus uncle rewards of 1/32 each; ~2.33M blocks a year at the 13.56 s average since then, ~3.8M ETC a year, ~2.4% of supply; next cut at block 30,000,000 (~Sep 2028)
Mint authority
none: coinbase pays miners only; changing the schedule needs a hard fork adopted by node operators. Olympia ECIPs 1111 to 1121 (EIP-1559 base fee redirected to a 'Sovereignty Vault' treasury, DAO and futarchy governance, a sanctions-compliance oracle) are all Draft with activation blocks TBD
Distribution
Ethereum's 2014 genesis: 60.1M ETH sold in an open 42-day public sale, ~11.9M to early contributors and the Ethereum Foundation outside the sale (7.5% of the 158.8M ever issued; no VC or private round). The Foundation's genesis multisig holds ~11 ETC on ETC (eth_getBalance, Oct 23, 2026); Grayscale ETCG custody holds 10.85M ETC (6.8%), which is a custodian, not control
Security
hashrate ~150 TH/s (miningpoolstats, Oct 23, 2026). Blocks by extraData, sampled on-chain to Oct 23, 2026: F2Pool 56.5% over ~24 hours, 61.4% over 7 days, 66.2% over ~31 days; 2Miners 12.8-24.8%, K1Pool 10.9-13.2%. NiceHash Etchash market fills ~0.05 TH/s, so rental is not the path; the majority already sits with one pool. All sampled public RPC nodes run CoreGeth v1.12.x. 51% attacks: Jan 2019 (double-spends ~$1.1M) and Aug 1, Aug 6 and Aug 29, 2020 (reorgs of 3,693, ~4,000 and over 7,000 blocks; ~$5.6M taken from OKEx in the first); MESS (ECIP-1100) was adopted in Oct 2020 and later replaced
Security budget
miner revenue ~$82K a day (~$30M a year, ~2.4% of market cap), ~99.97% subsidy
Value accrual
none to holders: fees and rewards go to miners; no burn, no staking
Revenue
fees ~$7.7K over the trailing year (DefiLlama, Oct 22, 2026); ~12K transactions a day (on-chain sample, Oct 23, 2026)
Usage
DeFi TVL ~$121K, stablecoins ~$72K (DefiLlama, Oct 23, 2026); not listed by BitPay
Liquidity
$37M a day of reported volume on a $1.25B market cap (CoinGecko, Oct 23, 2026); price $7.88, down 50% over the year and 95% below the May 2021 high of $167
Institutional access
Grayscale Ethereum Classic Trust (ETCG, OTCQX): 10,850,163 ETC and 13,993,800 shares on Jun 30, 2026 (~$85M at today's price); no ETF conversion filing found on EDGAR
Roadmap
Olympia upgrade set (fee market plus treasury) in draft; ECIP-1121 execution-layer alignment with Ethereum through Fusaka, activation TBD
Sources (14)

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