Ethereum Classic (ETC) is one of the worst performing digital assets in the top 20.

The coin, ETC, is down by double digits in the last trading week, shedding 21% against the resurgent USD, and posting losses of similar magnitudes against Ethereum (ETH) and Bitcoin (BTC).

Even so, ETC has been on a tear. Before the cool off, prices surged 286% from November 2019 lows before peaking in early February 2020.

Despite the drop in performance, or an inevitable correction in some quarters, is a bulk of supportive fundamentals.

Notably, Ethereum Classic top brass is always assertive and angling to maintain the project’s core of being decentralized, useful, and above all, being guided by code.

As code becomes law, the likes of Charles Hoskinson, one of the top co-founders of Ethereum before the fork and his path of creating competing DLT projects, is to stick with a Proof of Work consensus algorithm and improve interoperability.

Ethereum Classic, despite their insistence, suffered a hack where elements succeeded in executing what Coinbase team said was a Deep chain re-org, or simply, a reputational damaging 51% attack.

“Coinbase detected a deep chain reorganization of the Ethereum Classic blockchain. In order to protect customer funds, we immediately paused interactions with the ETC blockchain. At time of writing, we have identified a total of 15 reorganizations, 12 of which contained double spends, totaling 219,500 ETC (~$1.1M).”

There have been two hard forks, necessary software upgrades that highlight their ambition of coupling with the dominant fork—Ethereum, and fortifying up their bases and building a solid foundation.

Two hard forks, Atlantis and Agharta meant the network is now more interoperable with Ethereum, an advantageous move for users of both networks.

Agharta was successfully completed early this year at block height 9,573,000 and was inclusive of the updates–Constantinople and Petersburg– done on the Ethereum protocol. The Atlantis hard fork that preceded Agharta incorporated changes on Ethereum—Byzantium. Agharta marked the end of the team’s compatibility initiative.

The Ethereum Classic chain also has multiple block explorers, and within the next few months, the team plans to introduce state channels, scaling the network.

Again, even as prices recoil, social activity has increased on the network. On average, there are 41 ETC related posts an hour meaning there is buzz within the crypto community. This is according to stats from Lunar Crush.

Since the start of 2020, we've seen $etc social activity pick up along with price gains. Even with a bit of a retrace over the past week, activity remains strong with 659 posts today (up to 41 posts/hour) and it's now stabilizing. https://t.co/XWhFFw26Nd @eth_classic #ethclassic pic.twitter.com/mRiYNkhsRK

— LunarCRUSH Social Listening for Crypto (@LunarCRUSH) February 17, 2020