How the Work Reached Here
Ethereum Classic’s client and infrastructure have always depended on an organization willing to carry them. Each one did, and each one eventually closed or left, and the work moved with it.
| Organization | Funded this work | What it carried | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| ETCDEV | 2016 to 2018 | Supported Classic Geth, the client whose developers went on to form ETC Labs Core. | Closed in 2018 |
| ETC Labs | 2019 to 2021 | With ETC Core, led development through the fork and rebrand of multi-geth to Core-Geth. | Left the ecosystem in 2021 |
| ETC Cooperative | 2017 to 2026 | Funded and maintained Core-Geth from January 2022, and maintained other Ethereum Classic services. | Maintenance mode since the end of 2024 · dissolution scheduled by the end of 2026 |
| Ethereum Classic DAO | 2025 to present | The standing legal entity that maintains and funds the client, the bootnodes and the discovery lists as the funder of last resort. It took up Core-Geth's maintenance in February 2026, with the day-to-day work done by Ethereum Classic's core developers. | Current |
Each span is the years that organization funded Ethereum Classic public goods, which is longer than the years it funded Core-Geth.
The cost of that pattern is on the record. From June 2024 to February 2026, Core-Geth went 21 months without security maintenance, and one of the flaws that gap left open was used against Core-Geth v1.12 bootnodes in March 2026. The Cooperative had entered maintenance mode and stopped developing the client in 2025, and nothing in the protocol paid for anyone to take the work over.
June 2024
Core-Geth v1.12.20 is released from etclabscore/core-geth, the last stable release before a 21-month gap in security maintenance. Record
21 December 2024
Core-Geth maintenance moves to ethereumclassic/core-geth, the move the ETC Cooperative's published roadmap of July 2024 had proposed. Record
End of 2024
The ETC Cooperative enters maintenance mode. Its 2024 retrospective states that “it will be up to other stakeholders to take on any required maintenance of the ETC client”. Record
May 2025
Ethereum Classic DAO LLC is launched in Wyoming. Record
February 2026
Ethereum Classic core developers resume Core-Geth maintenance in ethereumclassic/core-geth, funded by the DAO as the funder of last resort: patching the outstanding vulnerabilities, moving to a supported Go toolchain, and rebuilding the release pipeline. Record
14 September 2026
The v1.13 series ships, the first release line published from the community's repository, with the organization's bootnodes and discovery lists built in. Record
The full account, with the commit and release behind each step, is in Core-Geth’s project history.
The Gap Behind the Instability
Ethereum Classic has no protocol-layer funding mechanism for its critical infrastructure or its core developers. No part of the network’s fee or issuance revenue pays for the client, the bootnodes or the discovery lists. Whether that work is done has depended on whether some organization chose to pay for it.
That dependency is a source of instability for the network itself. When the funding ends, the maintenance ends with it, and a consensus client that is not maintained accumulates unpatched vulnerabilities while exchanges, mining pools and custodians go on running it.
Ethereum Classic’s core developers maintain this work, and the DAO pays for it today. A funder of last resort keeps the work alive. It does not make the work sustainable, and it leaves the network one backer away from the same gap.
What the DAO pays for today
Client development
Tracking upstream security fixes, cutting and verifying releases
Bootnode servers
The entry points a new node contacts first
Domains
The names the discovery lists and services are published under
Sponsor This Work
If you are a stakeholder of Ethereum Classic, you rely on this infrastructure. Mining pools, exchanges and custodians, issuers of Ethereum Classic financial products, mining hardware manufacturers, block explorers and RPC providers all depend on a client that follows the network and on peer discovery that works every night. The developers who do the work are in place, and so is the standing entity that maintains and funds them. What the work needs is steady funding from those who depend on it.
An invoiced agreement
For organizations. A maintenance sponsorship invoiced against a purchase order, like any other vendor relationship, which is usually what a finance department needs.
A direct transfer
For anyone who prefers to send funds directly. An address is provided on request, only ever in a reply from the sponsorship address, and no donation address is published anywhere. If a large transfer is planned, send a small one first and confirm receipt at the same address.
Sponsors are credited
A sponsoring organization is credited on the project's support page with its name, a link and the years it has contributed, and only when it wants to be. It can be credited for the specific work it funds.
What it does not buy
No influence over consensus rules, release content, or what an audit reports. Chain configuration follows the ECIP process, and a sponsor gets the same client as everyone else, on the same schedule. Being credited records a contribution; it is not an endorsement of the sponsor's products or services.
Get in touch
Sponsors reach the Ethereum Classic core developers and maintainers at one address. Write with what you run and the period you want to cover.
The Resolution
Why Olympia Was Proposed
Olympia was proposed to close this gap in the protocol itself. Its specifications are drafts. As proposed, it would add a fee market in which the basefee of every transaction is credited to a protocol treasury rather than destroyed, and on-chain governance through which that treasury could fund core client development, critical infrastructure and network security: the work described on this page. Block rewards and tips would go entirely to miners, as they do today.
Each organization that carried this work did so on its own balance sheet, for as long as it could. A funding source in the protocol would not close or leave.
The work does not wait for it. Ethereum Classic’s core developers do the day-to-day work on the client and the infrastructure today, the DAO maintains and funds them as the funder of last resort, and sponsorship is how the stakeholders who depend on them share that cost.
Frequently Asked Questions
Ethereum Classic's core developers and open community contributions do the day-to-day work, in the ethereumclassic organization on GitHub. Ethereum Classic DAO LLC is the standing legal entity that maintains and funds that work as the funder of last resort, and it took up Core-Geth's maintenance in February 2026.
It is the standing legal entity that maintains and funds Ethereum Classic's public goods: the Core-Geth client, the network's bootnodes and the peer discovery lists. Funding has to be received and reported in a tax jurisdiction, and a sponsoring organization has to contract with someone, neither of which is possible when the software belongs to no one in particular; the DAO carries those obligations. It does so today as the funder of last resort, with the day-to-day work done by the core developers and the community. It does not control or lead Ethereum Classic, and it is not the only organization that can fund this work.
The ETC Cooperative, a US 501(c)(3) non-profit, funded Ethereum Classic's client and infrastructure from 2017 and stopped developing Core-Geth in 2025. Its 2024 retrospective states that it would stay in maintenance mode until its funding ran out. The services it maintained continue in the ethereumclassic organization. Its status: Maintenance mode since the end of 2024 · dissolution scheduled by the end of 2026.
Ethereum Classic has no protocol-layer funding mechanism for its critical infrastructure or its core developers, so no part of the network's fee or issuance revenue pays for it. The DAO pays for it today. Steady funding from the stakeholders who depend on the client is what keeps the work from resting on a single backer.
Write to donations@ethereumclassic.net, which reaches the Ethereum Classic core developers and maintainers. Organizations can sponsor through an invoiced maintenance agreement, and a direct transfer is possible to an address provided on request. coregeth.com/sponsor sets out who maintains the client and how sponsorship works, and the documentation's support page at docs.coregeth.com/support publishes the routes and credits sponsors. No donation address is published anywhere.
No. Sponsorship buys no influence over consensus rules, release content, or what an audit reports. Chain configuration follows the ECIP process, and a sponsor gets the same client as everyone else, on the same schedule. Being credited records a contribution; it is not an endorsement of the sponsor's products or services.
Olympia is a proposal, and its specifications are drafts. As proposed, it would credit the basefee of every transaction to a protocol treasury, and on-chain governance would allocate that treasury to core client development, critical infrastructure and network security, giving this work a funding source in the protocol. Until a funding source like that is in place, the work depends on sponsors and on the DAO as the funder of last resort.