Staffing changes and Q2 and Q3 reports

Bob Summerwill

December 05, 2024

Today I am announcing my departure as the Executive Director of the ETC Cooperative, a role which I have held since January 2019.

Grayscale’s funding of the ETC Cooperative came to a close in 2022 and we were lucky to receive a relative windfall in the 2021 bull-market, with nearly $5M of funding in that year. The ETC Cooperative bought around $1M of ETC that same year, but we have not been in a sustainable funding situation since that time, with just the hope that a new bull market would extend the runway further.

The crypto markets were brutal between March and August of this year, and the ETC Cooperative’s reserves (USD + ETC) were reduced from $4.2M down to $2.25M, a drop of nearly $2M dollars in the course of five months. Cuts to staffing were made in Q2 and in Q3, and in October I came to the decision that I should be the next to leave and I gave my notice to the board of directors.

Spending was reduced from $147K USD per month down to $99K USD per month, and then further to $72K USD per month heading into 2025. The much reduced spending in combination with rising ETC prices in Q4 has now given us a probable runway until September 2027 at current market rates.

POW Summit was held at the end of September 2024, flush with the end of Q3, and that was a natural place for the following staffing reductions:

Michael Parenti, who worked with Bob on POW Summit content
Emma Todd and other MMH staff who worked on POW Summit
Angelah Liu (Social Media Manager), and stopping all Chinese communications
Andrew Dick (Marketing Manager) reduced to part-time

With further cuts planned for mid-November:

Reduction of core development team from 3 developers to 2 developers, with Isaac Ardis ultimately volunteering to leave
Donald McIntyre (Senior Editor), though eventually extended until the end of the year

My own departure at the end of this year will leave the ETC Cooperative with the following staffing while decisions are pending on what is next for the ETC Cooperative:

Alison Alexis (part-time) - Financial Controller and Business Services
Andrew Dick (part-time) - Marketing Manager
Chris Ziogas - Core Developer
Diego López León - Core Developer

Here are the Q2 Report and the Q3 Report, detailing our activities over the last few months:

One major challenge for the core developers during this period has been that the upstream Geth client has removed all POW-related codepaths, which makes future merges challenging. After the Prophasis (v1.12.20) release, there has been several months of work underway to do the first merge after this removal. Multiple attempts were required to get things into what looks like a healthy state and that newer version is still pending release. The core developers will be assessing possible alternative strategies for client software moving forward, with fresh eyes on Besu, Erigon and Nethermind.

The second iteration of POW Summit was a major focus this year and the event was well received by speakers and attendees, but was a financial failure and is unlikely to be repeated in 2025. We have some excellent evergreen content from both years available on our YouTube channel.

At the time of writing, the ETC Cooperative is no longer participating in the ETC Grants DAO program. Antpool and Bitmain pledged $10M USD worth of investment into the ETC ecosystem more than two years ago, but only $500K or so of those funds ever made it to project teams. The ETC Cooperative had $250K to contribute and over $200K of that funding went into the first round of grants. The open grants program was largely ineffective, with some projects turning out to be outright rug pulls. The Cooperative provided further funding for the Djed and ERUSD teams into 2024, before withdrawing from the program.

The unspent funds from the initial $10M pledge remain under Bitmain’s sole control, as they have been since 2022. There are, in fact, over $11M USD equivalent of funds at the time of writing, following crypto market rises in the last few months. We hope those funds make it to ETC project teams.

Bitmain-driven activities under the ETC Grants DAO brand are ongoing on X and Telegram:

I joined the ETC Cooperative in January 2019 and it has been quite the ride. Six years is the longest that I have been any single role for my whole career. I was at Electronic Arts for 15+ years, but in numerous different roles.

It is time for new leadership at the ETC Cooperative. I regret that I have been unable to help build the kind of rich multi-party ETC ecosystem that we would all have liked to see, but I derive some satisfaction from the fact that the Cooperative has been a steady presence throughout, despite everything. I was particularly happy that we were able to financially support the core developers as ETC Labs collapsed and provide that continuity.

I would like to thank the board members, past and present, for their support and faith in me, and wish them all the best in the coming era for the Cooperative. My special thanks go to Barry Silbert for founding the ETC Cooperative in the first place, for funding it via Grayscale for so many years and for hiring me. Special thanks also to Craig Salm as the Chair since 2022 and for all the time and help he has given me in our regular calls over the years. Grayscale’s support of Ethereum Classic has been pivotal. Their ETC fund is still their third largest single asset fund by AUM - after Bitcoin and Ethereum.

I would also like to thank all of my colleagues, past and present, for sharing the journey with me. Anthony Lusardi, Yaz Khoury, Alison Alexis, Stevan Lohja, Kevin Lord, Diego López León, Donald McIntyre, Isaac Ardis, Chris Ziogas, Andrew Dick, Angelah Liu, Emma Todd and Michael Parenti.

Best wishes for 2025.

ETC Coop Board Statement

We thank Bob for his years of service, support and contributions to the Ethereum Classic ecosystem. As we look to the future, the board is evaluating next steps for the Ethereum Classic Cooperative, including succession plans.