I am quitting Ethereum

Classic.
My name is david. I have also sometimes gone by the handle
keepdoing. I own the social media presence ETCisComing.
This includes the website, twitter, facebook, slack and reddit
presences. As a person who has been heavily involved in
Ethereum Classic since day one of its existence, I have finally
come to the conclusion that Ethereum Classic has no future, nor
should it. Therefore I am shutting down the EtcIsComing
Twitter and website, and have already at the time of writing
liquidated most of my holdings into other, more sensible
projects.
Nevertheless I feel that I owe it to the community to write this
page, not only as a rationale for my actions, but as a warning to
anyone invested in Ethereum-based assets.
I will start by saying that Ethereum Classic has not delivered on
its (already questionable) value proposition. From the moment
ETC was created, the community has tried to brand it as a more
responsible and decentralized version of Ethereum. A lot of
people had ideological issues with the way the DAO
incident was handled, but more generally the community was
concerned with the reckless and irresponsible actions of the
Ethereum developers. This was a legitimate and noble purpose,
as poor coding and negligence with regards to security by
Ethereum developers has already resulted
in millions and millions and millions worth of damage for individ
uals and businesses. Ethereum Classic's value proposition was
that it was Ethereum, but (a) truly decentralized not controlled
by the Ethereum Foundation, and (b) minus the move fast and
break things modus operandi.
The problem is that it has become apparent to me that Ethereum
Classic is not, in fact, a responsible, long-term-oriented
Ethereum it is a crippled, sad wannabe Ethereum. It's a sour
grapes version of Ethereum and all the ideology is mainly just
a show.
Let's talk about development, shall we? Ethereum Classic
supposedly has three development teams. But who are these
people?
1. The Ethereum Commonwealth. Ooh, sounds impressive,
who are these guys? "They" are actually just one guy Dexaran
an anonymous guy from the Internet. Occasionally he's gotten
some people (volunteers? Paid contract workers?) to help him,
but mainly it's just him running the whole show. And this is
something a lot of people kind of know but will not admit
there is a high probability that Dexaran is the one who hacked
the DAO in the first place. Evidence:
A He is probably one of a handful of highly competent
Ethereum developers and security experts who could have
pulled off the DAO incident at the time. He's also posted
publicly on the record that he is very sympathetic to the
DAO Attacker. Nobody has any clue who he is either.
 B This post where he explains that his reason for
developing on ETC is because he is concerned the chain will
fade into obsolescence. If you're such a skilled Ethereum
developer, why care? Why not just develop on Ethereum
and leave ETC alone then? That is, unless you have a lot of
money tied up on ETC.
Point is, if Dexaran is actually the DAO attacker (quite
likely) then he has no incentive to support ETC long-term. If
his plan is to develop a decentralized exchange, and
also anonymity protocols on ETC perfect for being able to
liquidate the currently tainted ETC in the DAO attacker's
address, perhaps? If that is the case then the so-called
Ethereum Commonwealth is only here until the coins can
be dumped on the market.
2. IOHK. The only real, professional company working on ETC
development. But let's face it IOHK's main project is not ETC,
it's Cardano a newer blockchain system also aiming to lead in
the smart contract space. For every one developerIOHK has
assigned to ETC, they have five working on Cardano which is
set to become a major competitor to ETC and Ethereum. What
can ETC be but a testnet / playground for their main project?
Charles Hoskinson (head of IOHK) is one of the most respected
members of the ETC community and clearly one of the most
competent developers alongside Dexaran. But although he will
obviously never admit it to the public, he is already one foot out
the door with Cardano, whose success is already becoming
apparent.
3. ETCDEV. Considered the main development team for
ETC. But they barely DO ANYTHING. It has taken them over a
whole year to deliver on a simple monetary policy change
(reducing the block reward and establishing a supply cap of
~210 M coins). This should be simple, but has taken from last
October until now (the next December). Meanwhile their
developers, mainly Splix, would continually stir up division and
conflict within the community and alienate the other two dev
teams. They have shot down very good proposals from IOHK on
grounds of decentralization and need for consensus while in
reality they do whatever they want without any regard for the
community. Let us not forget that they are privately funded by
an anonymous third party, despite the fact that they have called
themselves volunteers and have asked for donations from the
community.
So the state of ETC development is that there are three teams -
(1) one anonymous guy who is possibly the DAO attacker, (2) a
company mainly working on a directly competing product, and
(3) a group that barely accomplishes anything while causing
division and being totally untransparent and misleading. This
criticism isn't new and was being commented on months ago.
And all of it shows. In the past year every other blockchain
project has moved forwards by leaps and bounds. But what has
ETC done? Last fall the hype was talk about monetary policy. In
spring the hype was agreement about monetary policy. In
summer the hype was that the code for the monetary policy had
finally been written. Now it's December and the hype is that
monetary policy is about to actually be implemented. Also a
couple of wallets came out in the meantime (not that we didn't
already have wallets, courtesy of Ethereum). Is this
accomplishment? Is this a revolutionary disruptor of a
technology? Hell, is this even anything remotely useful? I think
not.
But what about the price? The price has gone up, hasn't it?
Yes, it has. And this is the problem the price has gone
up based on what? Not because of any increase in the inherent
value of the chain. It's gone up because we have one big-shot
investor, Barry Silbert, who's gone to Wall Street and sold some
people on it. It's gone up because of hype it's been pumped.
Any time anything at all happens everyone rushes to stir up
enthusiasm as if it's a big deal a major red flag that nothing is
really moving forward. The biggest excitement for the past year
has been the monetary policy which is just an artificial
restriction of the supply in order to make the price go up. But
what is the utility of a higher price if the chain itself is no more
functional, has no more use cases being developed, than a year
ago? The only utility of a higher price in such a situation is the
ability to sell for more profit to dump.
The point I'm making is that the value proposition of Ethereum
Classic is a sham. Everyone claims it's decentralized, but a
handful of people control the development and the narrative.
Everyone claims that ETC is more responsible than Ethereum
we would never spawn an ICO boom of questionable get-rich-
quick-promising crowdfunded projects with no working
products. But in reality the ETCDEV team is now closely
associated with an ICO (with no working product) Fractalide,
and are trying to create a platform for launching ICOs
(TokenMint). The whole ETC community acts like it has some
sort of ethical superiority over Ethereum, but in practice they are
trying to do the exact same thing they're just doing a pathetic
job of it so far with less resources. The big money in ETC is just
pumping and dumping, while the ordinary people are left in a
state of denial, deluding themselves into thinking that they're
blazing some revolutionary path while they're really just
following Ethereum's footsteps, but at a snail's pace.
All the above points are the reasons I have decided to sell all of
my ETC. But there is also a much bigger reason why I am
writing this, and why I have taken down my website and twitter
account. The bigger reason is that Ethereum (including ETC) is
a danger to the entire cryptocurrency space. Many (most?) of us
in the space believe that blockchain technology has the potential
to revolutionize the world's economic system and to facilitate
a massive transfer of power from the banks and corporations
into the hands of ordinary people. But, there has been great
resistance from the existing system, which has tried to
characterize cryptocurrencies as nothing but unsafe, shady, and
risky speculative assets (for example: Jamie Dimon calling
Bitcoin a fraud). And this system still has one largely untapped
weapon up its sleeve regulation.
The recklessness that has been happening and continues to
happen in the Ethereum ecosystem including the multitudes of
unambiguously illegal (and often shady) ICOs, and the long trail
of damage left behind due to security errors prevalent in the
system strongly confirms the narrative that the establishment
is spinning about cryptocurrency in general. Furthermore, this
will be the doorway to a massive regulatory crackdown on all of
cryptocurrency, the likes of which very few people will
anticipate. Cryptocurrency is currently very under-regulated, and
of course regulation is inevitable and healthy for its global
adoption, but if the banks, corporations, and governments need
any excuse to wage open war on the entire free cryptocurrency
space, this is it.
Conclusion: I really am sad to say this, but I no longer believe in
Ethereum, least of all Ethereum Classic, as either a viable
investment or as a source of positive change. They have simply
screwed things up too badly, past the point of no return.
Fortunately, Ethereum is no longer the only major smart contract
platform in existence several other good and viable projects
now exist Cardano, as well as NEO, and EOS (although I am
not so familiar with these two), and also IOTA has smart
contract plans in 2018. And let us not forget about the Rootstock
platform, which is very close to bringing smart contract
capability directly to the Bitcoin network.
It took me 3 months of stepping back and stripping my
emotional attachments away in order to see things clearly. This
wasn't a decision taken lightly, nor a post written without
trepidation. But these things needed saying. Please just strip
yourself of emotional attachment and consider honestly these
things written. Best wishes to the individuals whom I have met
while involved in this project, especially Classic_Kevin who has
administered the day to day of ETCisComing recently (and who
was not made aware of my decision until moments before, and
who is a brilliant young man with a promising future. Kevin, I
am sorry that this will probably hurt you, but in this case the
needs of the many outweighed the needs of the one). Goodbye.