ETCDEV, a leading Ethereum Classic (ETC) development company, is shutting down activities due to a lack of funding.

The announcement was made yesterday, December 3, over Twitter.

The founder and CTO of ETCDEV, Igor Artamonov, stated that the lack of funding was partially due to the market crash. It seems the company’s reserves dried up and they struggled to secure funding for their operations. Per Artamonov, the group appealed to investors in the ecosystem and outside of it, as well as to the community to secure funding, but wasn’t successful.

Prior to the announcement, a poll was made asking the ETC community if they would help fund ETCDEV’s work. Unfortunately, 60% of the community revealed they wouldn’t, which led to the closure of the development company.

The Future of Ethereum Classic

Due to the prolonged bear market the cryptocurrency ecosystem is going through, many teams are now being forced to either quit their projects or go through restructuring. One good example is the recent Steemit case, where the company had to lay off 70% of its staff.

Several people in the crypto community speculated how this announcement would impact the future of Ethereum Classic, a predecessor of the well-known Ethereum. Some critics started declaring the project as dead, but it took little time for the team to put an end to the rumors. The team pointed out that ETCDEV is not the only independent development team working on Ethereum Classic:

ETC observed a substantial price growth in August (peaking at $18.7) after the announcement that it had been accepted as a trading pair at Coinbase. According to data from CryptoCompare, ETC is currently trading at $4.73 and is down 1.25% over the last 24 hours. It seems that the events surrounding ETCDEV had little impact on the price.  

Ethereum Classic dropped on the announcement