Sponsor Core-Geth
The Core-Geth client is a public good, and someone has to maintain and pay for it.
It is the network's reference client, published from ethereumclassic/core-geth and kept in the ethereumclassic GitHub organization alongside the bootnodes and the peer discovery lists that nodes start from, so the software Ethereum Classic runs on belongs to the network rather than to whoever is paying for it that year.
Maintainers and funding
Who maintains it
The client is maintained in the ethereumclassic GitHub organization by Ethereum Classic's core developers and open community contributions, who do the work, together with the Ethereum Classic DAO, the standing legal entity that maintains and funds the client as the funder of last resort and the floor under the work when nobody else is paying.
Who does the work
Ethereum Classic Core Developers
@ethereumclassic/core-developers
The work happens in public: pull requests anyone can read, and every repository in the
github.com/ethereumclassicethereumclassicorganization carries more than one admin and more than one maintainer, so no single person or employer is a point of failure.The legal wrapper
Ethereum Classic DAO
A Wyoming DAO LLC, and what gives the network a legal counterpart when the world asks for one. Funding has to be received and reported in a tax jurisdiction, and an organization sponsoring the work has to contract with someone; neither is possible when the software belongs to no one in particular. The DAO carries those obligations and keeps the public goods from being captured by any individual or employer along the way. It does not control or lead Ethereum Classic, and it is not the only organization that can fund this work: it is the builder, maintainer and funder of last resort, the floor under the work rather than the hands doing it.
ethereumclassicdao.org
How it got here
Moving Ethereum Classic's public goods into the ethereumclassic GitHub organization began in 2024, through the ETC Cooperative's own efforts: its published roadmap of July 2024 proposed moving Core-Geth into that organization, and ethereumclassic/core-geth was created in December 2024. Before that move, the work passed from one organization to the next as each closed or left: ETCDEV in 2018, ETC Labs in 2021, and the ETC Cooperative, which entered maintenance mode at the end of 2024 and is due to dissolve by the end of 2026. Along the way the client changed repositories, the bootnodes and the peer discovery lists changed operators, and the v1.12 line went 21 months without security maintenance in etclabscore/core-geth. What that cost is published in full, release by release and audit by audit: the record is on the security page.
Core-Geth's funders
Who has funded Ethereum Classic public goods
| Years | Organization |
|---|---|
| 2016 to 2018 | ETCDEV |
| 2019 to 2021 | ETC Labs |
| 2017 to 2026 | ETC Cooperative |
| 2025 to present | Ethereum Classic DAO |
Each span is the years that organization funded Ethereum Classic public goods, which is longer than the years it funded Core-Geth. The Ethereum Classic DAO maintains and funds this work today as the funder of last resort, and the day-to-day work is done by Ethereum Classic's core developers and open community contributions. Sponsors are credited on the documentation's support page, with a name, a link and the years contributed, and only when they want to be.
How the work passed between themThe case for sponsoring Core-Geth
Why sponsor public goods
If you are a stakeholder of Ethereum Classic, you rely on this client. Mining pools, centralized 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 receives security fixes promptly. 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 this work.
This is not hypothetical. Three times the organization paying for the work has left, and the last time the v1.12 line went 21 months without security maintenance: the flaws the March 2026 audit found were still open when one of them was used against Core-Geth v1.12 bootnodes. Keeping the software in the ethereumclassic organization is meant to stop the next handover costing the same.
Ethereum Classic's core developers do the day-to-day work, and the Ethereum Classic DAO is the standing legal entity that maintains and funds the client as the funder of last resort, whose commitment is that the network is never again left without security maintenance. A last resort is a floor rather than a plan: what the work needs is steady funding from the stakeholders who depend on it, so that it no longer rests on a single backer.
What sponsorship pays for
Keeping a consensus client fit to run a live network: tracking upstream security fixes and deciding which apply to Ethereum Classic, cutting and verifying releases across nine platforms, running the bootnodes and publishing the peer discovery lists the network bootstraps from, and measuring what the published binaries actually contain. The audits are the record of that work, including what was found broken and what it took to fix.
The auditsWhat sponsorship does not buy
No influence over consensus rules, release content, or what an audit reports. Chain configuration follows the ECIP process, and every finding this project publishes is measured and linked so it can be checked without trusting either the maintainers or anyone who funds them. 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.
Sponsoring Core-Geth
How to sponsor
An invoiced agreement, for organizations
A maintenance sponsorship can be invoiced against a purchase order like any other vendor relationship, which is usually what a finance department needs. Write with what you run and the period you want to cover.
A direct transfer
The maintainers provide an address on request. If a large transfer is planned, send a small one first and confirm receipt at the same address.
Every route starts at the sponsorship address
A transfer address is only ever sent in a reply from that address. One shown to you in a screenshot, a fork, a mirror or any other message came from somewhere else.
Write to donations@ethereumclassic.net. The documentation's support page is where these routes are published, and the one to check any other against.
Support this work