The Agharta hard fork is going to include features of Ethereum's Constantinople fork. The plan is to make the Ethereum classic 100 percent compatible with Ethereum. Ethereum Classic will go under the moniker ETC. This information was made public in a press release from ETC Labs on December 26. ETC Labs confirmed its plans to make sure that the compatibility between ETC and ETH will be 100 percent. Their press release also stated that the planned Agharta update will create a backward compatibility between both of these networks.

Terry Culver, who is the CEO of ETC Labs, added that the Ether classic labs is one of the world's first incubators for supporting innovative projects on the ETH classic blockchain platform. The compatibility between the ETH and ETC networks will hasten the development of the ecosystem and community of ETH Classic.

Culver went on to add that ETC and ETH grew out of the same root. Restoring the technical compatibility should boost the developmental process and allow each network to have a few differences. There will also be less disruption to the networks. James Wo, who is the founder of ETC Labs, added that the upcoming hard fork is meant to be a signal that ETC wants to be 100 percent compatible with Ethereum. Wo added that they believe in the utility of public blockchains because they focus on the strength of the community. The Agharta hard fork is expected to take place around January 15, 2020.

Earlier in December, ETC's core technology coordinator, Stevan Lohja, stated that the ETC core development team and ecosystem stakeholders had agreed on the plans for a target block number for main network activation. They also agreed on a test network review period for validating the functions of the environment. Lohja added that the core developers agreed to activate Agharta at block number 9,573,000, which is expected to happen around January 15, 2020.

ETC Labs Core is also rebranding itself to ETC Core. This is to clarify the difference between it and ETC Labs. Lohja added that the rebranding will allow the company to differentiate.