With the addition of Ethereum Classic on Poloniex come a lot of questions that need to be answered. After all, this is the original Ethereum without the hard fork code, while the “regular” ETH currency is still in existence as well. Poloniex but together a small list of the most common questions, and it is good to see some exchanges take responsibility for their actions, whereas others tend to ignore this situation even exists.
No Replay Attack Vulnerability On Poloniex
One of the biggest points of confusion revolves around the so-called “replay attacks”, which is an issue that should have been addressed by ETH developers months ago. Unlike the Ethereum developers, Poloniex made sure they separated ETH and ETC as best they could, resulting in the failure of replay attacks. Every address used on the Poloniex exchange exists on only one of the two blockchains.
On the Ethereum blockchain, however, ETH and ETC are still linked together. The developers assumed ETC would lose traction, while the opposite has happened over the past few days. As a result, ETH will need to implement another hard fork to rectify this sloppy coding by the developers. Never make assumptions in the world of cryptocurrency, they will come to haunt you.
That being said, users who make a deposit to Poloniex are still vulnerable to replay attacks. That is, assuming they haven’t taken the precaution of separating their ETC and ETH funds themselves. The Poloniex system will funnel funds accordingly to direct the balances to their unique addresses on the right blockchain, though.
The best way to solve this problem is by having users do everything they can to separate both wallets at an early stage, preferably before sending funds to the exchange. Most people use the Ethereum Mist wallet, which can be utilized as a sole ETC wallet by declining activating the hard fork code during setup. Do keep in mind parity client is still in development as well.
For the time being, there are still some interesting things that will need to happen shortly. First of all, the Ethereum developers will need to clean up their code to ensure the replay attacks will be invalid by default. Secondly, Ethereum Classic will not go away even though some people may want it to. There is support for this initiative, and the interest continues to grow.
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