670K-follower ETH Classic account turns into Ergo: What happened?

Followers of the Ethereum Classic Twitter account may have found themselves the unintended fans of an entirely new crypto project after Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson turned the account into the new community page for the Ergo community.

The Ethereum Classic account had built up over 600,000 followers since its inception in July 2016, and up until Sept. 15, has been used to post about Ethereum Classic.

However, as of Oct. 6, the Twitter page now reflects the Ergo Platform, a proof-of-work (PoW) blockchain capable of facilitating smart contracts, similar to Ethereum, with links to Cardano.

In a lengthy thread pinned on Ethereum Classic’s new Twitter handle on Oct. 6, Bob Summerwill, the executive director of a public charity supporting Ethereum Classic pointed the finger at Hoskinson for repurposing the account, noting that “6 years of community work has been erased.”

The new handle is yet to reach the follower numbers of its old account, with only 364 followers at the time of writing.

So what just happened with this account?

— Ethereum Classic (@eth_classic) October 6, 2022

In the thread, Summerwill outlines how Hoskinson’s blockchain company Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK) withdrew from the ETC for a second time following a lack of support for a proposal of his, and refused to talk about the Twitter account until a Sep. 6 Twitter post where he declared he would not be returning it to the ETC community.

Return? It's my account. As for return, I can't get back the millions of dollars of development we spent nor the years of time supporting a blockchain that didn't seem to want to do anything other than preserve a status quo. We'll call it even

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) September 5, 2022

The move by Hoskinson has essentially boosted the Twitter followers of the Ergo Platform, which has the old handle of @ergoplatformorg with only 64,000 followers. The Ergo account holder has even directed its followers to its “new account” @Ergo_Platform.

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Issues between Hoskinson and his former project are not new, with Hoskinson being well known for his dislike of Ethereum, and going as far as calling Ethereum Classic a “dead project with no purpose.”