Ethereum Classic is gearing up for a major hard fork. Its name is Atlantis. But the altcoin winter is taking its toll.

Ethereum Classic has been silent for a while. But now the coin is back in the limelight. In a new tweet, the company announced that it’s getting ready for a major Atlantis fork. It’ll take place today.

Ethereum Classic Community is Ready for the Atlantis Hard Fork https://t.co/sUuwJK6JXE

— Ethereum Classic (@eth_classic) September 12, 2019

So what exactly does it entail? The company states, “the community has embraced the new features and functionality with 10 major ECIPs as part of the upgrade. This provides compatibility and interoperability equivalent to the “Byzantium” and “Spurious Dragon” Ethereum hard fork.” It adds that the 10 ECIPs focus on security, zk-SNARK, state-trie clearing, contract code size limits, opcodes, and more efficient computing.

Trust Wallet reacted to the post, saying that it is ready for the hard fork.

Trust Wallet is ready for the $ETC @eth_classic Atlantis Hard Fork 👨‍🚀🚀 #getTrust https://t.co/Jwvms8gwfP

— Trust – Crypto Wallet (@TrustWalletApp) September 12, 2019

Altcoin winter is playing a role

In spite of the fact that the event should be a pretty conspicuous one, users didn’t really respond to it. A tweet by Crypto Knatoffi @FifaFloeten suggests why. He points out that the altcoin market is dead. Had it been 2017, the coin would have been pumped immediately. Fair enough: currently, ETH classic is slightly down, trading at $178.66 at press time.

Crazy how dead the altcoin market is. Imagine “Atlantis” has come out in 2017, everybody would get crazy and ETC would Pump to the moon.

— T-800 (@FifaFloeten) September 12, 2019

Many observers and prominent crypto figures, like Crypto.com’s Kris Marszalek, agree that we’re seeing an altcoin winter. Nonetheless, it’s also fair to state that this isn’t the end of the world. Overall, the market is in a relatively healthy condition with BTC trading around $10,000. Concurrently, BTC bulls, like Mike Novogratz, seem to have formed a consensus that Bitcoin will inevitably go up. They also believe that altcoins will follow. While this remains to be seen, one thing’s clear: the market is evolving even in the current bearish conditions.

Previously, Altcoin Buzz reported that Ethereum Classic launched an accelerator program to promote development. Besides, it unveiled an open-source substitute to Infura, Ethercluster.