Ethereum Classic, like ethereum, supports smart contracts and decentralized applications (dapps). It originated from a contentious hard fork of the ethereum blockchain that took place in 2016. Following the creation that year of a decentralized autonomous organization, dubbed The DAO, atop the Ethereum blockchain, hackers managed to exploit vulnerabilities and stole about $60 million of ether. After much debate, the Ethereum network’s code was altered to return the lost funds to investors. But some ethereum nodes objected to the fork on the grounds that it would mean that the blockchain would not be immutable, among other reasons, and decided that they would not run the updated software. These nodes continued to run and mine the pre-fork version of the ethereum blockchain, and it’s now known as ethereum classic.