In this comprehensive interview with Bob Summerwill, Executive Director of the ETC Cooperative, we went over the current state of the ETC Cooperative with regards to its support for Ethereum Classic. You may watch our interview with Bob Summerwill here: We divided the conversation into three big themes: - Bob's background and how he started to work for the ETC Cooperative
- The ETC Cooperative's broad mission
- The ETC Cooperative's main projects
Bob told us how he initially moved to Vancouver from the UK due to his work as a software engineer in a game development company, then met some bitcoiners and Ethereum enthusiasts in meetups and other gatherings in Canada, a big hub for crypto projects at the time, and ended up working ad honorem for the Ethereum Foundation for a while. Later, he got a paid job as a C++ developer at the foundation where he worked for the platform. In late 2017, Bob started to travel, attend events, and meet many crypto leaders and personalities in several projects, doing a lot of "bridge building" betweeb people and communities. Early in 2018, at the Ethereum oriented EDCON event, he met Anthony Lusardi of the ETC Cooperative, who was invited by Virgil Griffith of the Ethereum Foundation as part of this bridge building effort. In 2018, Bob was invited by Anthony to speak at the ETC Summit in Seoul, Korea which was held in September of that year. By the beginning of 2019 he was offered a job as Executive Director at the ETC Cooperative and ever since has been working to advance ETC in the blockchain industry. Bob defined the ETC Cooperative and its mission as an organization with no privileges that is not, and does not want to be central nor mission critial for ETC because of Ethereum Classic's decentralized nature, but the organization does have a full focus on supporting the network's core infrastructure, non-core projects and services, and ETC's promotion in general. For this, Bob explained four main projects that the ETC Cooperative is conducting: 1. Client Development: The ETC Cooperative has a staff of three core developers who are maintaining the ETC software clients Core Geth and Hyperledger Besu. Additionally, the team has started the testing and implementation of the Erigon client on ETC. The Erigon client is a promising technology for Ethereum Classic because it is a much more efficient and optimized node software that may significantly reduce bloat in the network, which is one of the main pending goals of EVM compatible blockchains. 2. Non-protocol projects: The ETC Cooperative continues to support the maintenance of Blockscout, the most widely used block explorer in the ETC ecosystem. Additionally, Ethercluster the most widely used node service provider in Ethereum Classic, is being migrated completely to Rivet an independent firm that provides world class cloud-based Ethereum compatible blockchain APIs. In November of this year the ETC Cooperative also announced the launch of ETC Safe which is a widely used app to create multisignature wallets (or more accurately smart contracts that work like multisig wallets) for both individuals and teams. 3. New communications team: The ETC Cooperative has hired four professionals; Donald McIntyre, Andrew Dick, Angelah Liu, and Emma Todd; to conduct the communications function for the ETC Cooperative and Ethereum Classic at large. The team will produce content; including videos, articles, and live streams; conduct marketing campaigns, promote ETC on social media, and organize events. 4. The new $10,000,000 grants program: The mining pool firm AntPool has donated $10,000,000 for the development of the ETC ecosystem in coordination with the ETC Cooperative, and both organizations will soon start a grants program that is seeking to distribute its first grants before the end of 2022. One half of the total funds in the program, $5,000,000, have been allocated into $ETC and are being held in an ETC Safe multisignature wallet. Please watch the video above for the full interview with Bob Summerwill. | 
