Ethereum Classic Successfully Completes 'Agharta' Hard Fork

Ethereum Classic successfully completed the "Agharta" hard fork at block number 9,573,000 at 06:26 UTC on Sunday, according to etcnodes.org.

Similar to the network's last backwards-incompatible upgrade in September, Atlantis, Agharta makes ethereum classic more interoperable with sister-chain ethereum.

As part of the hard fork, the Constantinople and St. Petersburg upgrades deployed in tandem on the ethereum network last February will be enabled under Ethereum Classic Improvement Proposal 1056.The 22nd largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, ethereum classic and ethereum engaged in a messy divorce following the 2016 DAO hack.

Ethereum classic community members opted to not roll back the transactions enabling the DAO hacker to steal the funds; meanwhile, ethereum soft-forked, partially reclaiming the hacked funds.

Three years after the split, ethereum classic has engaged in efforts to rebuild community and technical ties between the two chains, Atlantis and Agharta being two measures towards that effort.

Although different chains with different visions, ethereum classic is facing similar difficulties to ethereum, however.

According to ETC Core executive director Bob Summerwill, ethereum classic is showing signs of consolidation around select clients - the full servers which process network requests - similarly to ethereum.

Parity Technologies, which recently announced its intention to step back from maintaining its code base individually, is expected to host 75 percent of the ethereum classic network as another major client, Geth Classic, is deprecated after the Agharta hard fork.

At time of writing, ethereum classic has 252 Parity Ethereum clients, 167 Geth Classic, 80 Multi-Geth and 1 Besu for a total of 500 clients.

Afri Schoedon, release manager at Parity Technologies and ethereum classic hard fork coordinator, told CoinDesk that client centralization is a small concern given the state of Geth Classic and available alternatives.