Whitepaper - Ethereum Classic With Cover

Ethereum Classic Documentation, Release 0.1
How to get testnet Ether?
See :ref: test-networks.
Can a transaction be sent by a third party? i.e can transaction broadcasting be outsourced
Technically yes, but there is an important restriction as opposed to bitcoin signed transactions: in ethereum the
transaction has a nonce (more precisely, each account increases a counter when sending a transaction based on
how many transactions total have been sent. If 3 transactions have ever been sent from the account, the account
nonce would be 3).
Can Ethereum contracts pull data using third-party APIs?
No, Ethereum contracts cannot pull data from external information sources in this way. It is however possible to
push data from external sites (e.g. weather sites, stock prices) to Ethereum contracts through transactions. There
are “oracle” services that are compatible with the Ethereum network that will pull/push data to the Ethereum
network for a fee.
Is the content of the data and contracts sent over the Ethereum network encrypted?
Data and contracts on the Ethereum network are encoded, but not encrypted. Everyone can audit the behavior of
the contracts and the data sent to them. However, you are always free to encrypt data locally before broadcasting
it to the network.
Can I store secrets or passwords on the Ethereum network?
All data on Ethereum is public. It is not possible to store secrets or passwords in Ethereum contracts without
it being seen by all. There is work being done to make this a possibility through code obfuscation and other
techniques. A good read would be this article by Vitalik Buterin.
How will Ethereum combat centralisation of mining pools?
There are two primary ways that the Ethereum PoW based consensus algorithm combats mining centralisation
(Source).
• The first is by reducing losses due to orphaned blocks, which independent miners are more likely to experience.
– This portion of the Ethereum mining algorithm, a technique referred to as GHOST, includes the headers
only of recently orphaned blocks in return for a reduced reward to both the block producer and
the includer of the (otherwise orphaned) block. These included orphans from “grandparent” or earlier
blocks are frequently referred to as “uncle” blocks because the gender neutral term “ommer” isn’t
widely known or understood.
• The second way that the Ethereum PoW consensus algorithm combats mining centralisation is by its use of
a Proof of Work function that is ASIC resistant.
– By preventing mining from becoming dominated by specially designed and produced hardware, independent
miners are kept competitive or even given an advantage in terms of their profits and/or levels
of hardware investment, because they can make use of readily available commodity hardware (i.e.
consumer graphics cards).
How will Ethereum deal with ever increasing blockchain size?
There are many discussions around blockchain scalability. This questioned has been partially answered on this
Ethereum StackExchange post and this blog post from Vitalik Buterin.
114 Chapter 1. Contents