# Ethereum Classic > **Machine-Evolution Nexus:** [[articles/Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution|Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution]] places this node within the history and governance of substrate-independent evolution. **Domain:** Blockchain / Technological Lineage **Doc Type:** Canonical Wiki Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition Ethereum Classic is the chain that continued the pre-DAO-fork Ethereum state-transition history after a minority rejected the 2016 corrective fork. ## Nexus Context It preserves a shared ancestry with Ethereum followed by constitutional divergence over immutability and intervention. ## Evidence Boundary It is a distinct technical lineage, not evidence that ledgers are organisms or subjects. Shared pre-fork state resembles common ancestry but does not settle personal-continuity analogies. ## Relationships [[wiki/Ethereum|Ethereum]], [[wiki/The DAO|The DAO]], [[wiki/Hard Fork|Hard Fork]], [[wiki/Branching Descent|Branching Descent]] ## Sources / Provenance - Ethereum.org, “Timeline of all Ethereum forks”; Ethereum Foundation (2016).