Ergo, WTF?

A letter to the Ergo community and leadership about recent events on Twitter

Update: It appears that discussion about the Twitter fiasco is being censored in Ergo forums. Please share this important information with fellow Ergonauts and the wider community via uncensored channels.

There have been reports that Classic Airways flight ETC61 on route to ETCistan has been hijacked and is now on course to Ergoland. It appears that, without warning, the pilot, disgruntled after being rejected a pay raise, has gone rogue and diverted mid-flight, holding passengers and the future of our service hostage.

The 672,000 passengers on board, mostly asleep on the long haul flight, are blissfully unaware of their new destination, but will sooner or later wake up and are likely to be displeased once they realize they are not on the flight path they signed up for.

The stunned ground staff at Classic Airways can only watch with deep concern, but they maintain radio contact with the cockpit, desperate to help resolve the situation.

Ground control to ETC61, do you copy?

Table of Contents

The Hijack

This scenario, of course, is an analogy describing the recent drama that has unfolded on Twitter surrounding the renaming of the verified @eth_classic Twitter account to @Ergo_Platform.

The recent action caused the transfer, without consent, of 672k followers and the entire tweet history from Ethereum Classic to “Ergo’s new account”. Those followers who signed up for ETC updates have been bait-and-switched into seeing Ergo updates, and any threads on Twitter or links posted around the internet to will redirect to Ergo’s account, creating confusion and unnecessary suspicion about the Ergo Project. Of course, this also caused the follower count of @eth_classic’s previously verified Twitter account to reset to 0, erasing 6 years of work community building by ETC participants.

Pilot, not Owner

The most important detail in the analogy is to highlight is that the login credentials of the Twitter account, much like the key to the airplane, were originally handed over to this pilot in good faith, with the assumption and expectation that they would act as caretaker of the account in the interests of the Ethereum Classic project.

Whilst the pilot may possess keys and control the plane, he never ‘owned’ the plane, nor did he have the moral right to do whatever he wanted with it. The pilot gained access to those keys based on the understanding that he’d be a good custodian, and not make rash moves like the one that just occurred. For this reason, many people got on board.

At the time, the pilot was actively supporting and funding the Ethereum Classic project and had a good reputation, so this pilot appeared to be a fine choice to look after the plane. Unfortunately, that trust was abused and used against ETC in retaliation for the rejection of the pilot’s own proposal that would have granted him 7% of future block rewards.

The details of exactly how the hijack took place are documented elsewhere, but as of writing, the Ergo Project, or whoever is in control of the @Ergo_Platform Twitter account, now has a important choice that will set the tone of the Ergo Project’s culture, reputation and future. History is watching the next moves of the project’s leadership and the Ergo community, which could make the difference between long term survival and sliding into an unethical and corrupt patterns of behavior that ultimately result in the centralization and demise of this promising project.

No Beef

Ergo has a solid Manifesto that outlines strong decentralist principles that the project claims to be integral to it’s foundation. Ergo is similar to Ethereum Classic in many ways, and that’s great. It's a shame that this Twitter drama has been thrust upon Ergo’s unsuspecting community, who now have to deal with the ire of those flying Classic Airways, who feel an injustice has been done.

Ethereum Classic and Ergo are not rivals in terms of philosophy, technology or communities. They are two chains with different approaches trying to solve the same global problems. ETC has the EVM, Ergo has ErgoScript, the chains have different ecosystems, and different views on the idea of a treasury. That's cool, and the two project can live together in peace and harmony.

This letter is addressed to the Ergo community and leadership. We hope to convince you that the recent action is not only against the spirit of honesty and integrity outlined in your own project’s Manifesto, but is a strategically inept, short-sighted move that has caused collateral damage across the ecosystem and is more than likely to harm the Ergo Project long term if it is not rectified.

Ergo leadership need to think not just about short-term optics for Ergo, but also about the damage they have inflicted on the wider ecosystem, and the effect this will has on the project's culture and long-term reputation. On a moral level, there are issues that perhaps they overlooked; from their actions contradicting the stated goals of of The Ergo Manifesto, to the ethical quandary that accepting the hijacked account has created by deceiving investors.

We also hope to ring the alarm bell that your project may be compromised by the influence of a capricious actor, who, without any whiff of consultation with your community, has thrust upon you a toxic situation that, rather than being in the interests of Ergo, may have turned your project into a pawn to be used in a long standing personal vendetta against ETC.

This letter is not an attack on the Ergo Project itself, which shares many of the same principles and future vision of Ethereum Classic, and may, after this fiasco is sorted out, share common supporters. Instead, we hope to help your project by laying forth an argument that will, through community pressure, persuade the leaders of Ergo Project to do the right thing for everyone involved, and help restore the @eth_classic account and it’s followers to it’s rightful custodians.

The Damage

Let’s first address a common retort: “Who Cares? It’s just a Twitter account”. Fair enough, it's not the end of the world. But there have been a number of unforeseen consequences that could have been avoided if the Ergo Foundation was open and transparent with the Ergo community, discussing the trade-offs, whether they were worth it, add potentially finding ways to accept the account while mitigating problems.

The acceptance of the hijacked account is a bigger problem for Ergo and the wider crypto ecosystem than it is for Etheruem Classic. Not only does it highlight a flaw in the opaque decision making process at the Ergo Foundation, which did not consult it's community, but it has damaged the Ergo brand and will continue to do so unless the move is undone.

Let's take a look at the trade-offs that were made by Ergo's leadership when they accepted the account. What costs, financial, social, or otherwise, have they inflicted on ETC, Ergo and the public?

Verified Status

One relatively minor change is that the @eth_classic account now has lost it’s verified status, which, although not particularly meaningful, helped new users navigate the space and avoid scams. The loss of verified status may hurt new users financially, and prevents potentially important updates such as security alerts from reaching users in an easily verifiable way, increasing the possibility of avoidable real-world problems.

With no verified status, everyone that wants to follow Ethereum Classic on Twitter now has to search through the many unverified accounts, hurting adoption and wasting people's time.

Returning this verified status is beyond the ability of the Ergo Project, barring negotiations with Twitter Support, but it is worth mentioning that this move was not the simple switching of a handle, but a tangible loss to the Ethereum Classic project, it’s followers, and new entrants.

The Followers

The biggest blow that the move has inflicted on the Ethereum Classic project is the loss of it’s 672k Twitter followers. Whether we like it or not, accumulating Twitter followers represents a kind of social Proof of Work, that gives credibility to an account, in a similar way to verified status.

Some supporters of the hijack claim "it doesn’t matter, they’re all bots", or "just un-follow Ergo and re-follow the new ETC account". Sounds good, but these arguments are irrelevant as to whether or not the hijack was justified, and they cut both ways.

Clearly the prestige of a project reaching 600,000 odd followers means something, otherwise there would be no point in hijacking the account in the first place. The same followers, bots or otherwise, could just follow Ergo if they are really that interested, so why does the Ergo Project care so much about overriding their original decision to follow ETC, given the trade-offs?

First Impressions

Another element to this deception is that for those following @eth_classic, each had specifically requested to receive updates about Ethereum Classic via Twitter. It is these 672k followers who are also inconvenienced by the hijack, and will have a sour taste in their mouths after finding out the Ergo Project has inserted themselves into their feed without their consent.

In the pilots own words, he is protecting people from following Ethereum Classic. That’s one opinion, but people are allowed to have different opinions, and maybe one or two of those 672k ETC followers would disagree. Why not let people make their own decisions about which projects they follow?

Deceiving Investors

In practice, we all know that follower counts on Twitter do mean something and are a reflection of the popularity of a project, which in turn has an effect on whether new entrants believe a project has enough support to be worth looking into further. By stripping ETC of these followers, the Ergo Project is appropriating the 6 years of work that the ETC community put to gain a large following, and the associated marketing benefit that rightfully belongs to Ethereum Classic.

Possibly one of the shadiest things about this whole affair is that the Ergo Project leadership has shown it is perfectly happy to artificially inflate it's projects popularity, duping investors by essentially buying fake followers, a strategy frowned upon by even the most degenerate degens.

Sure, the fake followers were not purchased and were "gifted", but that makes no material difference to the investors looking to find good projects, who will now be misled into believing the Ergo project is 10 times more popular than it really is, and 600 times more popular that Etheruem Classic. #Shame.

Ergonauts, if you want your project to be built on a throne of lies and deceit, this is the way to go about it. The piecemeal new interest this might generate will be far outweighed once investors discover the truth of this dirty tactic.

Violating Twitter ToS

It's worth pointing out that this follower account bump, which has artificially inflated the perceived popularity of Ergo, appears to violate Twitter’s Terms of Service, further highlighting the shadiness in the way the hijack took place.

Platform manipulation can take many forms and our rules are intended to address a wide range of prohibited behavior, including:
[...]
inauthentic engagements, that attempt to make accounts or content appear more popular or active than they are;

You can’t artificially inflate your own or others’ followers or engagement. This includes:
[...]
account transfers or sales – selling, purchasing, trading, or offering the sale, purchase, or trade of Twitter accounts, usernames, or temporary access to Twitter accounts.

Unfortunately, Twitter is rather selective in it's enforcement and has no skin in this particular game, so it is unlikely they'll do much about it.

Breaking Integrations

The @eth_classic account was used in many ways beyond just in a web browser on Twitter.com. Many services relied on the feed for important security updates and social engagement metrics via the Twitter API.

Now, all of these applications that were integrated with Ethereum Classic have to go through the hassle of un-following and re-following, which depending on the application, could be quite time consuming.

This is a pain in the ass for many system administrators and developers across the globe, and could break social media tracking apps, bots used for trading, critical update monitoring tools, and hobbyist side projects.

It may sound like a simple task, but each application has it's own quirks and expectations, which could break and require fixing due to the rename. Perhaps they'll need to push code updates, and maybe they are feeding Ergo updates instead of ETC updates into their databases, which they will need to be manually cleaned up, taking valuable developer time. This will not only require code updates, but could potentially screw up the operation trading algorithms and other systems, causing financial losses through offline or misbehaving software.

@etc_network just lost 672k followers, short ETC!

• Hypothetical badly programmed trading bot

It's impossible to predict a dollar cost of the damages caused by these bugs and the developer time needed to make fixes, but it certainly non-zero, and it takes time and energy that could be better spent on improving the ecosystem in other ways.

Thanks, Ergo!

• Thousands of developers around the globe

Social Teams

Another side effect of the hijack is that it will cause businesses all over the world annoyance and financial pain, as social media teams have to manually correct who they are following. Exchanges, Mining Pools, Wallet devs, Coin Listing sites, etc, have social media teams that manually monitor social channels like Twitter for important project updates.

Now all of these professional operations are out of the loop, and will all have spend resources to send out a message to inform their teams that they need to un-follow Ergo and re-follow an Ethereum Classic account.

This costs real world dollars, perhaps small on a per-project basis, but collectively adds up with the thousands of media teams and project across the globe all losing time, money and productivity.

Twitter Lists

Ergo is also appearing in Ethereum lists all over twitter. As Ethereum Classic gained engagements via the Twitter algorithm, many "Ethereum lists" now fill people's feeds with a bunch of Ergo posts that will need need to be manually, or gradually automatically filtered out over time.

As we've seen above, even the search function on Twitter is effected, which will probably resolve itself eventually, but will permanently damage the discoverability of Ethereum Classic accounts.

The Tweets

The other major loss, although more annoying than intrinsically damaging to the ETC project, is the entire tweet history of @eth_classic now appearing under the @Ergo_Platform account. The amusing result is that those who aren’t privy to the recent hijack are now under the impression that from 2016 until last month, Ergo Platform’s main Twitter account was be a die-hard Ethereum Classic supporter.

Another effect is that all retweets and replies to @eth_classic are now replies to @Ergo_Platform, sewing confusion, suspicion, and unpredictably changing the meaning of comments of those who have suddenly found that their previous engagement with Classic (with love, hate, or otherwise) now directed to Ergo. The hijack, therefore, doesn’t just hurt ETC and Ergo, but anyone trying to make sense of historical Twitter threads or replied to an @eth_classic post.

Erasing History

One way to “solve” this problem, other than returning the account to @eth_classic, is to delete those old tweets. To do so, however, would really be crossing the line in the eyes of many. Historical conversations will no longer make sense, links all over the internet will break, and these many inconveniences, let alone the book burning, will likely cause the reputation of Ergo to be tarnished beyond repair, with no benefit to Ergo in return.

The nuclear option of deleting ETC’s past tweets has been brought up, and we are grateful they remain preserved so far. No right-minded ETCer wants those old tweets deleted, as they are cherished, timestamped, reminders of our history that can be retweeted on anniversaries and used by future historians to piece together the shared history of the early development of the blockchain universe.

These Tweets are cultural relics, of sorts, that hold value beyond their content, and many of which were created before the rogue pilot gained control of the account. They hold strong sentimental value for the early supports of ETC, especially those from around the time of The DAO fork, when emotions were running high.

For many, deleting these historical tweets, the destruction of ETC’s cultural heritage, would make things personal. At the very least, Ergo Foundation, please, don’t delete them.

At the same time, many ETC community members look with discomfort at historical tweets that were created by @eth_classic. Viewing these tweets today makes it appear that Ergo is taking credit for ETC's early accomplishments.

The hijack has caused weird many situations like this, and shows a lack of respect for other’s contributions, and whether you like ETC or not, just feels pretty gross.

Backlash

For the Ergo project, the first obvious short term negative consequence of accepting the hijacked account is protest from many different communities including within Ergo itself. Unethical behavior is a red flag for any project, particularly within a crypto currency project, particularly those with a principled narrative such as Ergo’s. The reason for protesting is obvious; a community that engages in dirty tricks will eventually consume itself, and is a direction honest actors strive to avoid.

Within Ergo

An objective take of the reactions from within the Ergo forums (before they were censored) and Twitter thread shows that the move was at the very least controversial, with a majority of level-headed responses being hesitant or outright critical.

Most of the posts supporting the move are relatively low effort excuses that have been addressed above, while those supporting restoring the account appearing to make more pragmatic, long-term, better written arguments.

Already, it seems like the tide is turning within the Ergo community on this issue and, after the initial excitement, the reality is dawning that this might not be the best idea. More negative comments from Ergonauts are appearing, and a new Ergo community Twitter account has been created to mirror tweets from the Ergo_Platform account, just in case.

As the excitement of the hijack fades and the complaints from ETCers persist, it can only be expected that this trend continues. Hopefully this letter accelerates it.

Without Ergo

The sour taste of the hijack, of course, is not just limited to within the Ergo community. Quite rightly, the Ethereum Classic community has been stirred up, but the negative energy will likely ripple far wider and for far longer than expected, and become be a permanent stain on the record of an otherwise unblemished budding new project.

Nearly every tweet from the @Ergo_Platform account has at least one response highlighting the deception of the Twitter account hijack, and motivated Ethereum Classic supporters are unlikely to go silently into the night on this issue. As time passes, the continued protest tweets will quickly outweigh the minor boost of followers, and this dark cloud will incessantly follow around the Ergo project like a nasty rash that would have been best dealt with immediately.

It is worth mentioning here again that the hijack will continue to piss off random unassociated netizens who stumble upon old links and twitter threads that are confusingly redirected to Ergo, forever accumulating bad juju associated with the Ergo brand.

The Ergo Manifesto

One of the very first tweets made from the new @Ergo_Platform account was about The Ergo Manifesto. The Manifesto clearly shows the many similarities in the underlying philosophy and mission that aligns Ethereum Classic with Ergo, particularly when it comes to a principles-based approach that helps guide decision making in the social layer.

Keeping your Word

The Manifesto is a commitment, a social contract that Ergo community members and especially it’s leadership should uphold. If Ergonauts are to act in ways that contravene their own Manifesto, why even have one, other than for deceptive marketing purposes?

Using Ergo’s own stated goals via the Manifesto, we hope to show the Ergo community that recent hijack contradicts the soul and intention of the Ergo project. It is understandable that mistakes are made occasionally, but once they are pointed out, surely it is the responsibility of project leaders to rectify these mistakes in order to bring the project back in line with the guiding principles that it's community members signed up for. If not the principles outlined in the Ergo Manifesto, what is really guiding decision making?

Let's try to create grassroots finance.

Grassroots organizations are emergent. They form when a collective of individuals come together without any top down decision making, but share a common goal. Ethereum Classic and Ergo share this common goal and have built their own unique grassroots communities. But after the hijack, Ergo’s Twitter following ceased to be grassroots, and was artificially inflated based on a top down decision, without consulting either Ergo or ETC communities.

Right now, the market mentality seems as follows: how do we honeypot new users with hype marketing, drive pumps and cannibalize these new members of communities.

We couldn’t agree more, and this unfortunate zero-sum mentality perfectly reflects the hijack, which was not made by the Ergo Community, but by an ex-ETCer with an ax to grind, cannibalizing ETC's following to hype the Ergo Project with an artificial pump of numbers.

Ethereum Classic, a non-VC grassroots project without any significant marketing budget or premine, has relied on handouts, volunteers that believe in a shared vision, and has grown it’s following organically by focusing on principles and long-term thinking. It seems strange that the Ergo community would be okay with weaponizing Twitter to attack such a project in this way.

The current state of the market is a little sad. We need to get back to the roots of the crypto-revolution, decentralized tools that are private and secure and drive real-world adoption of these systems.

Again, this part of the manifesto is fully in line with ETC’s approach. We need to go back to the roots, the original visions that were shared, before bitter rivalries, and to the sense of cross-project comradery that existed in the earlier days. In those days, skulduggery like hijacking a Twitter account would be universally frowned upon, treated with maximal suspicion, and the perpetrators disassociated with.

It is critically important to make systems as non-interactive and non-custodial as possible. Eliminating the potential for bad actors and protecting the people. This was a failure in technology and should serve as a warning of the dangers of centralized blockchain.

Unfortunately, Twitter accounts exist in the world of Web 2.0, which necessitates that a single actor ultimately controls the account. Until there is a Web 3.0 version of Twitter that could be controlled by fairer but more complex multi-sig or DAO structures, the only available option is to rely on a single custodian, trusting them not to betray the community who build up around them.

Sometimes, such as in this case, it is impossible to spot bad actors, and good actors can turn bad. The only way to rectify situations like this is for the other good actors to not sit back in silence.

A lack of trust cannot be the foundation of a healthy society. Healthy societies are built on cooperation, and voluntary cooperation is, in and of itself, an exercise in trust.

While, together, we are building the future of finance, until these systems are in place, trust is something we are forced to rely on. In the case of the hijack, that trust was abused. We hope that Ergo community can recognize this, demand your leaders to the right thing, and in turn build up a huge amount of good will and trust with ETC and wider ecosystem. It seems quite clear that this earned trust will be worth far more than a few thousand followers.

How many times in human history have religious, political, or tribal conflicts led to one group in power forcibly taking the wealth of another less powerful group? How often is seizing financial assets used as an authoritarian control?

Once more, at least, it seems.

Malicious behavior that may affect the security of the network should be avoided. If any of these parties appear during Ergo's lifetime, the community should consider ways to decrease their impact level.

This is possibly the most important part of the Manifesto for the Ergo community to take note of at this moment, and where this letter hopes to provide the most value by highlighting.

Bad actors, by their nature, do not always show their true colors from the get go. If they did, they’d be pretty bad at being bad actors. Instead, they attempt to align themselves with the interests of a community and gain standing, only to then betray that built up trust and leverage it, if they don’t get their way.

Dear Ergo community, the following sincere advice comes from the first hand experience of the Ethereum Classic community: beware of bad actors attempting to hijack your project. Think carefully about who is making the decisions, what is really driving them, and always ask if leadership decisions are in the best interests of your project. Failing to do so vigilantly early on can quite easily enable them to gain more and more influence over your project until it is no longer following it’s own principles, but instead the immediate interests of those who have captured decision making.

This has been the case in many projects, and was nearly the case for ETC. For those who have sincerely bought into the principles outlined in your Manifesto, we hope that is not already the case for Ergo.

What is the answer? Education. Educating users to protect themselves, identify malicious actors, avoid them, and work together to minimize their influence. I would encourage all community members to continually seek to learn, adopt tooling, assist and teach in one way or another. A strong community is born through strong cooperation.

Education, indeed, is crucial. In line with The Ergo Manifesto, it is the responsibility of those good actors in the Ergo community who are against the Twitter hijacking on principle to spread the message that it should be rectified.

We should always see beyond our noses, thinking into the future. What tools can we add? How can we improve? What are the risks? How can we prepare for what is next?

In a moment, we hope to demonstrate why the hijacking is far from future-thinking. How can you improve, you ask? One way is to gain a few thousand annoyed ETC followers, another is to show the world that your project does in fact follow it’s own principles. If you want to face and survive an antagonistic future, holding on to your principles in all aspects of behavior will allow you to stay grounded during the difficult times.

If, instead, you want to play the realpolitik game, letting go of your principles when it’s convenient, you will surely be divided up by others who are willing to play that game more underhandedly. Careful of your next moves, as they will set a precedent and your project's trajectory.

This long-term vision must never die for Ergo to survive. Ergo was born in crypto winter when many had already begun dismissing the future of distributed systems and their ability to create value; nonetheless, we endured and kept building.

Ethereum Classic, similarly, survives long term due to it's community's commitment to the principles and original vision. Ergo has the ability to join this small family of noble projects, but it requires consistency, and passing up on some opportunities that might create an immediate short term benefit, but sacrifices much more in long term value.

Too often, people sacrifice long-term growth for short-term excitement. Good times will come, and hard times will come. If Ergo is to endure, we must be principled and create value on solid foundations.

Bravo. We couldn't have put it better.

Ergo community, please take heed of the wisdom in your Manifesto.

Pragmatism is Downstream of Principles

The Ergo Manifesto is a work that most in the Ethereum Classic community would agree with in spirit and substance. If the Ergo community indeed values it’s own stated goals, it should act in accordance with them, with consistency and integrity. Doing so is not just the right thing but the most strategically sound approach.

While we are on the topic of principles, there is another timeless principle that we ask Ergonauts to think about: The Golden Rule. What would be your reaction if the owner of the @ergoplatformorg Twitter handle defected and it was redirected and re-branded to, say, Expanse? What would be your preferred outcome if the shoe was on the other foot?

Charles’ Ergo

With all the damage done by the hijack to Ergo, ETC and the wider ecosystem, surely there must be a really good reason to not just go ahead with it, but refuse to undo it with all the backlash. A few thousand fake twitter followers seems like an extremely high price to pay for such chaos and bad publicity. There must be another explanation.

We now need to address the elephant in the room, the pilot at the center of all this controversy, Charles Hoskinson, CEO of IOHK. We’ve avoided name-dropping Charles until this point to try to keep the our main contention non-personal. But this letter, and our warning to the Ergo community, would not be complete without taking a closer look at the interests of the main agitator, who thrust this drama onto the lap of the Ergo Project, and by doing so stands to gain a disproportionate level control over the project, in a similar pattern of behavior that was witnessed with Ethereum Classic.

This is not an attack on Charles' character, although we could not resist the Ego pun. Apart from that, we'll just focus on actions and the rational intentions that anyone in his position may have. We will ignore the details of controversies related to other projects, focusing here only on ETC and Ergo. Needless to say, it is always worth doing a bit of research on who you accept gifts from.

Changing the Narrative

As many followers of Charles may be aware, he has recently transitioned from being a supporter of Ethereum Classic, contributing time and resources, to turning on ETC by disparaging it’s community, calling it a dead project, and branding it’s promoters as unethical.

Charles was hardly ever seen engaging in Ethereum Classic community discussions, and had many other interests and projects to focus on, so perhaps he can be forgiven for assuming our community didn't exist.

Perhaps part of the reason the Ethereum Classic had less engagement than it could have was because the verified @eth_classic account was controlled by Charles, who quite clearly had an incentive to make his dead chain claims carry more weight. In the months and years leading up to the hijack, much of the content posted to this account was low effort and irregular.

In any case, even if ETC was dead, which it isn’t, that doesn’t mean it couldn't become useful in the future. Perhaps Proof of Stake chains will become censored, a future that the Ergo’s existence appears to anticipate. Charles’ claim of ETC being dead does not say anything about where ETC might be in the future, and does not give him, who can not predict the future, the right to be judge, jury and executioner, and hijack an account created and grown by our community.

In reality, the likelihood is that Charles dislikes ETC in particular, and paradoxically talks a lot about it, not because of it being unethical or a dead project, but because the ETC community rightfully rejected a proposal created by IOHK that would have resulted in IOHK receiving 7% of ETC’s block reward indefinitely, regardless of price increases.

Conveniently, it was only during the debate about this controversial proposal that Charles decided ETC was a "sinking ship", but before this point, was happy to contribute millions of dollars of funding and development of the Mantis client. IOHK’s client was a welcome contribution, but unfortunately did not gain adoption.

Similar to this hijack for Ergo, Charles’ ETC treasury proposal did not align with Ethereum Classic’s clearly stated historic principles. The ETC community welcomes differences of opinion, discussions and debate, but Charles declined to engage with that debate and instead left the community when he couldn’t reach a consensus on his proposal. He then held the Twitter account hostage, and implied the ETC community owed him for his contributions.

In this tweet, Charles lets it slip that he knew the @eth_classic account was given with the expectation of him being a custodian, not having free rein. If the account was truly his, in what way would the sunk cost of millions of dollars make things "even"?

If this is the approach Charles took with ETC – that the community owed him for his contributions – is it not fair to assume he expects something similar from the Ergo Project? Perhaps just loyalty, but we do wonder what a Twitter account with 672k followers is worth. It's a pretty generous gift, that's for sure.

Ethics, is it?

Conveniently timed with the hijack, Charles’ new message about Ethereum Classic is that it had suddenly become some kind of pump-and-dump scheme. The only ethical thing for him to do is to hand over the control of the @eth_classic to some other project.

Yes, apparently Ethereum Classic supporters have been trying to gather followers to dump on, in the most elaborate way possible, in a scam that's been ongoing for 7 years, one that IOHK participated in, one that is the 3rd largest PoW chain by market cap, the largest ETHash family hashrate, the one with consistent massive trading volume and liquidity, that is listed on virtually every exchange and has maintained a multi billion market cap, the one with verified on Twitter and nearly 700k followers?

Please.

Even if the @eth_classic handle was going to be used solely dumping on investors, which it isn’t, that doesn’t justify handing over 672k followers to some other project out of the blue. Charles controlled the account after all, and if he really believes that Ethereum Classic's sole purpose was dumping on people, why not re-purpose it to warn all the existing followers of the perils they were in?

Sometimes, it's best to judge people by their actions rather than their words. All signs point to this flimsy excuse being confected because the hijack was the exact opposite of ethical. The smokescreen of an ethical justification was required to flip the morality narrative of the hijack around in typical confession through projection fashion.

Surely the unethical action, the one that was actually executed rather than just imagined, was to artificially inflate the Twitter account of a project he invested in, tricking the public into believing it's more popular that it really is.

What was that quote from the Manifesto, again?

The current state of the market is a little sad. [...] Right now, the market mentality seems as follows: how do we honeypot new users with hype marketing, drive pumps and cannibalize these new members of communities.

Indeed, how might one do that?

Decisions, Decisions

Going by his own logic, Charles had the option of “gifting” the account to any existing blockchain project he didn’t deem a pump-and-dump scheme, he could even ethically invest in said project before hand if he wanted. Or perhaps he could simply delete the account to save the helpless ETC followers. Out of all the possible options, he just happened to choose Ergo. Interesting. Why is that, we wonder?

Why not just delete the account? Twitter Support might interpret that as vandalism and it and give it back to the community. Transferring it to Cardano, outwardly funded by IOHK, would be too obviously a conflict of interest. It's also too much of a risk giving those 672k followers to any other project that might do the right thing and protect their brand by returning control to the ETC community.

Ideally you'd need to find a project that's roughly similar to ETC in technology and values, because that way you can say you're helping out those followers by upgrading them to an exciting new project that's just like ETC, but better.

But how do you square the circle of finding such a project who's Foundation will agree to do your bidding? It would be a bit of a marketing problem if a project, who’s manifesto calls for it to be decentralized, was really controlled behind the scenes disproportionately by a single entity that has it's own set of interests not necessarily lined up with the interests of said project.

Fear not, for Ergo has the answer. Ergo remains completely independent from IOHK, and merely has a few harmless partnerships. Just because The author of the Ergo Manifesto used to work for IOHK, and IOHK’s business manager is currently working for Ergo Foundation, that doesn't mean they'd be influenced by the CEO of IOHK. That's just a coincidence, and their decisions will only ever take into account what's best for Ergo, the most independent and decentralized of all the blockchains.

Their leadership is so independent, the last thing they would do is accept a hijacked Twitter account and refuse to give it back even in the face of backlash just because Charles asked them to. Perish the thought. Those few thousand followers are worth far more than the collateral damage to the ecosystem and a permanent and a stain on Ergo's spotless and principled reputation.

It's settled. Clearly the only ethical thing to do is hand the 672k followers over to Ergo.

Ergo, Captured?

If all those ties between Ergo Foundation and IOHK are really are just coincidental, then the "gift" given by Charles does seem a little odd, doesn't it? Could it be there's something else going on that has implications about the independence of the Ergo project?

What if a situation occurred in the future where the interests of Ergo project conflicted with the interests of Charles or IOHK. Yes, they're totally independent, but which company or project is more important, and who really calls the shots? Would the foundation do what's right for Ergo, or what's right for Charles?

What if such a situation, for the reasons outlined above, is not happening in the future, but is happening right here and now?

Is @Ergo_Platforrm being controlled by those looking out for your interests, or are they allowing the reputation of the Ergo project, and your investments and contributions to be sacrificed, by prioritizing some other agenda?

Stop Asking Questions!

After attempting to find out more about who was in control of the Twitter account keys in the Ergo Discord server, the only response was an insta-ban. In contrast, the Ethereum Classic community is welcome to such inquiry as these questions help provide transparency and identify central points of failure.

It is very interesting that the Ergo mods were skittish this question, and we encourage Ergonauts to help uncover the truth. As passengers of Ergo Airlines, you should check who actually has the keys to the plane. If you are turning @Ergo_Platform into your main Twitter account, then you should ensure that someone who is fully aligned with Ergo is controlling it, and that they agree to hand over custody to someone who is aligned should they change their mind.

My understanding is that they were given to CW, the social media guy for Ergo. He was the one who handed the new minted @eth_classic to me.

• Bob Summerwill, ETC Discord

It may be the case the credentials have been passed to Ergo Foundation, but did this include any limitations - are they free to return the keys to ETC? Could it be that Charles still indirectly has power over the account in some way that influences Ergo Foundation's decision making? If he does, surely this is a red flag for the project, as this certified hijacker may feel like another spot of hijacking.

If not, then the Ergo Project leadership, in the interests of transparency, should be willing to open a dialog with the public, Ergonauts and otherwise, about what it would take to restore the account, and listen to the community rather than making decisions behind closed doors. They should be open about if there are any strings attached when they agreed to take custody of the account.

It might be wise not to repeat the mistake that the Ethereum Classic community made by entrusting your main Twitter account without any explicit guarantees or commitments. It would be a mistake to promote this account unless you, as a community, are sure it will be always used for good.

There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.

• Some dude in the Ethereum Classic discord

Tinfoil Hat Time, Ergonauts!

To be clear, dear Ergo community, one possibility is that this recent Twitter hijack was not to help your Ergo, but to primarily benefit Charles’ Ego at your expense. It could be that the Ergo community is being played. It could be that this top down behavior from Ergo Foundation, which is supposed to listen to the community, but gave you no consultation, is centralizing it's influence via this "gift" that just maybe, has strings attached, that are not entirely in the best interests of the Ergo project.

And maybe you're all okay with that, but maybe some of you aren't, and would like to ensure this is not the case. Right now, Ergo is presented with excellent opportunity to prove that it not captured, and that it remains independent, decentralized, and guided by it's principles. The restoring of @eth_classic is a clear win for the Ergo project, which will generate much good will in the crypto space.

We are not making any claims or accusations here, and only speculating, but if the Ergo community is entitled to the truth, and if the community wants to restore @eth_classic but the Ergo Foundation does not, what then?

At the very least, if you have skin in the game, you have the right to demand transparency from your leadership.

Ergonauts, by pushing this issue, at worst, if Ergo's top brass refuses to budge, you'll know you dodged a bullet early on; that this project's leadership listens to the power-players over it's community, and that it's all decentralization theater. At best, if the @eth_classic account is restored, you'll have identified a great project early on that is in fact legit, and generate a bunch of positive interest in Ergo.

Signs point towards the possibility that even with overwhelming demands from within the Ergo community, Charles will force the hand of Ergo Foundation to keep the account to avoid backpedaling and losing face. If this is the case, you'll learn just how decentralized and independent your project really is.

Will the promising Ergo project prove itself to be merely Charles' lapdog, carrying out a personal vendetta on his behalf while shoring up his control of your project at the expense of Ergo’s reputation and the wider ecosystem? Who knows, but the future hopes you can prove otherwise.

Anyway, the ball is in your court now; it is up to the Ergo community and leadership decide. Or just ignore this whole thing and go for a pint, up to you.

Over and Out

If the Twitter account is fully restored to the ETC community, the Ergo Project will gain far more than an artificially inflated follower count and a bunch of pissed off crypto people.

• You'll help avoid confusion in the wider ecosystem.
• By doing so, keep Ergo’s name clean for new entrants.
• Avoid incessant claims of having stolen ETC’s Twitter account.
• Save many hours and real world expenses required to businesses around the globe to update their systems and re-follow ETC.
• Allow these saved resources to be spent developing the crypto space.
• Build bridges with the ETC community, who share common values and the same greater goals.
• Undo the vandalism to Ethereum Classic’s valued tweets that are part of blockchain history.
• Prove Ergo is genuinely decentralized and independent from IOHK.
• Bust most importantly: put your best foot forward and demonstrate your honesty as a project and community, and gain a massive optics win in the eyes of the crypto space that will drive interest in your project for good reasons, not bad.

Ergo did not earn those followers, the ETC community did. A sense of fair play and integrity go a long way in this space, and rather than starting a lasting feud that will drag the name of Ergo through the mud, you can just end it now, return the account, and make peace, not war.

Ergo community and leadership, you have the power to stop the bickering within and between our communities and put this incident behind us. Take action, and save the future of your project.

Together, we have bigger fish to fry.

Respectfully Yours,

Air Traffic Control, Classic Airways

Updates:

• 2022-10-11: Removed Poll Screenshot, Fix Typos