ETC, the token of Ethereum Classic, logged a double-digit gain in the past 24 hours as of Tuesday morning in Asia, while its hashrate hit a record high on Monday as miners look for alternatives in anticipation of the “Merge.”

See related article: Markets: Bitcoin rises slightly, Ether and Ethereum Classic gain amid price run for alternatives

Fast facts

• Ethereum Classic, the original blockchain from which the current Ethereum (ETH) network was forked, saw its native token surge 24.4% in the prior 24 hours to change hands at US$40.38 at 9:40 a.m. in Hong Kong, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

• That price gain comes as the network’s hashrate hit 48.89 terahashes per second (TH/s) on Monday, the highest level on record, before the reading nudged down to 45.99 TH/s on Tuesday morning, data from 2miners.com showed.

• The ETC hashrate level, which refers to the total computational power used for mining and processing transactions, was at 29.85 TH/s on Aug. 7.

• While Ethereum is working toward its highly-anticipated transition to a proof-of-stake (PoS) mechanism, miners who are invested in proof-of-work (PoW) consensus model have appeared to contribute to mining Ethereum Classic, which goes with the PoW model.

• BTC.com, one of the largest mining pools, announced last week that it would offer zero-fee ETC mining for three months starting Sept. 1.

• ETH gained 5.23% in the past 24 hours to flip hands at US$1,661.

See related article: Why Ethereum PoW fork gains some crypto exchange backings