- ETC Labs has entered into a partnership with Metronome
- This partnership will allow for interoperability for blockchain assets
Following the recent news of Ethereum being enabled on the Opera browser and Ethereum Classic setting a date for their upcoming hardfork, it has recently been announced on June 27, 2019, that Ethereum Classic, via ETC Labs, has partnered with Metronome, a cryptocurrency firm to create a solution for ETH/ETC interoperability.
This new development could help bridge the gap between Ethereum and Ethereum Classic following their 2016 split.
Building New Bridges
The essence of this partnership is to enable interoperability between ETH and ETC. Interoperability is also referred to as chainhopping in the sense that a blockchain asset can be transferred between two separate blockchains. Metronome (MET), which is the native cryptocurrency of Metronome will be transferable between ETH and ETC blockchains which had been split in 2016 following division about the return of money that was lost after the collapse of DAO the same year.
This marks the first time that the property of a blockchain has interoperability functions but according to the official announcement, this is not to be the last:
“As the first cryptocurrency capable of being exported and imported across chains, Metronome will be initially issued on Ethereum with Ethereum Classic, Rootstock on Bitcoin, and Qtum support expected to follow. Such portability will allow users to select the chain that suits their requirements for management and security, or even upgrade the MET contract if needed.”
A solid step forward for Ethereum Classic
Along with inter-operability capabilities, the partnership will also entail ETC labs providing support for Metronome validation network which is a set of a minimum of five decentralized individual validators which work to verify the validity of Metronome transactions. By doing this, Metronome transactions are more reliable and less prone to double spend attacks.
This partnership is important because, for the most part, blockchains and their various assets are seen as entirely separate entities that rarely if ever interact with one another but this serves as the first building block towards interoperability between blockchains and is a step towards a more united blockchain community and ecosystem.
With ETH and ETC finally reunited in this way, there is hope that even more blockchains will follow within the same vein and see more beneficial transfer of assets.
