ONE HISTORY. TWO CHAINS.
Ethereum’s 20 July 2016 hard fork followed the DAO attack and led to separate Ethereum and Ethereum Classic chains.
At sunset, one railway line opens into two routes. Two travellers stand beside the switch with maps in their hands. One map carries a return arrow; the other a padlock. The track behind them is shared. Ahead, the signs point to ETH and ETC. This imagined junction gives a physical shape to the disagreement that divided Ethereum in the summer of 2016.
The 17 June DAO attack had left the community facing a decision about an application built on Ethereum. Should the network intervene to help recover the funds, or preserve the contract's outcome? On 20 July 2016, at block 1,920,000, the hard fork enacted a specific change to the chain's state. Balances from DAO-related contracts moved into a recovery contract, allowing DAO token holders to reclaim Ether.
The chain that adopted the intervention continued as Ethereum, using ETH. Participants who rejected the change kept the original chain running; it became Ethereum Classic, using ETC. Their objection centred on the principle that an application's failure should not justify changing the underlying chain's rules. The fork's supporters accepted an exceptional intervention to return funds. A common history now had two continuing networks.
The return arrow and padlock simplify that argument into symbols. Neither traveller is a named historical participant, and neither route is a judgement on which future was right. The fork did not rewrite earlier transaction records; it changed particular balances at a defined block. Beyond that point, the two chains could record different events. The railway captures the lasting consequence of a community that could no longer agree on one path.
Sources & the artist’s interpretation
The 17 June alert documents the attack. The 20 July completion notice records the recovery change and block; Ethereum's fork history explains the split. The caption is editorial, not a historical quotation. The railway and travellers are symbolic. Layout research included TeVe's public-domain Oulu turnout photograph ; this is not the event's location. No cross-card cameo prop is present. The approved 1060 × 1484 artwork is unchanged, yielding approximately 127 PPI at full A4. Physical book reproduction remains subject to a separate print proof.
