There has been an Ethereum Classic – Mantis: IOHK Development Update for April 2021.  Those who want to know the technical details will have to visit the You Tube video.

Dom Zajkowski, Technical lead stated, they have completed:  Download block headers via header skeleton, implement branch resolving during fast sync.  It fixes how branch re-organization is performed.  Refactors to blacklisting and peer-listing code.

In progress:  Reorganization to how block fetching is performed.  Further investigations in check pointing.  Automating check pointing test coverage, and more.

There are naysayers for what IOHK are trying to do for ETC, but those who are level headed feel it is awesome progression.  They have also thanked IOHK for not giving up on Ethereum Classic.

Those who are new to ETC should, check the presentation covering the current state of ETC, its history from inception, to the last upgrade and more during Afternoon Tea & ETC?” by Stevan Lohja ETC Cooperative.

Running your own node according to ETC is a method to decentralize the network.  Also, when it comes to facilitating privacy and security in transaction, they claim it provides with more control over how to use your ETC.

Further they have announced that Hyperledger Besu v21.1.5 Released. A link to download it is also provided.

For clarity, Hyperledger Besu is an Ethereum client designed to be enterprise-friendly for both public and private permissioned network use cases. It can also be ran on test networks such as Rinkeby, Ropsten, and Görli.  Hyperledger Besu includes several consensus algorithms including PoW, PoA, and IBFT, and has comprehensive permissioning schemes designed specifically for uses in a consortium environment.

It is important to note that Hyperledger Besu is different from Hyperledger Fabric.

ETC Cooperative previously tweeted:  ‘Besu Launcher’ is a CLI option that helps to launch and configure the Ethereum Classic mainnet and its testnets—including Astor (SHA3).’

Those who are interested can take a look at their short video which shows how simple it to use on an Enterprise grade client for ETC like Besu.

The video points to how this helpful tool (Besu Launcher) created by the developers at Hyperledger Besu permits users to interactively configure and start their nodes with the most commonly used options.

Regardless of how Besu was installed, users should simply add the option `- -Xlauncher` or `- -Xlauncher-force.`

Those who have already created a config file. Besu Launcher asks a series of questions and generates a configuration file.

Meanwhile your node has already begun its initial sync and download. This incredibly simple yet robust tool supports the public Ethereum Classic and Kotti, Mordor, ECIP1049_DEV, and Astor (SHA3) test networks.