Longtime Bitcoin developer Paul Sztorc has been trying to overhaul Bitcoin’s architecture since 2015, but the wider community hasn’t budged.
So now he has proposed a dramatic move, called the eCash hardfork, which involves copying Bitcoin’s code to launch a separate version in August while giving existing bitcoin holders equivalent tokens in the new network for free.
However, the community criticizes the funding part, which involves the redistribution of coins linked to Bitcoin’s missing founder, Satoshi Nakamoto.
What is a hard fork?
Think of a hard fork as a railroad line splitting in two. The trains start from the same station, but at some point the line splits, helping the trains reach completely different destinations.
When a group of developers can’t agree on a proposed change to Bitcoin’s code, they copy the existing blockchain and launch it as a separate chain that shares Bitcoin’s entire history up until the split, but diverges after the split and moves forward with its own rules, features, token, and direction.
That’s exactly what happened in 2017, when the debate over Bitcoin’s block size reached a tipping point, culminating in a chain split and the creation of the Bitcoin Cash blockchain with its original token, BCH.
The technical dispute centered on Bitcoin’s 1MB block size limit, which limits the number of transactions that can be processed every 10 minutes as new blocks are added to the blockchain. Therefore, some advocated increasing the block size, but the community remained divided, eventually leading to a chain split.
Sztorc’s eCash hard fork
The proposed hard fork will create a new chain called eCash with native eCash tokens. “Hold 4.19 BTC at the time of the fork, get 4.19 eCash. You can sell it, keep it or ignore it completely,” he said on X.
The fork is scheduled for Bitcoin block height 964,000 in August 2026. A coin splitter tool will be released to help holders cleanly separate their BTC from their new eCash.
The new chain will be a near-copy of Bitcoin’s existing blockchain, with a critical addition called Drivechains, a scaling architecture that Sztorc first proposed in 2015 and formally submitted to Bitcoin developers as BIP300 and BIP301 in 2017 and 2019, respectively.
Drivechains are sidechains tied to the Bitcoin blockchain, enabling seamless movement of BTC between the main chain and sidechains without changing Bitcoin’s base layer. Each sidechain can operate under its own rules and features, essentially allowing developers to build new features on top of Bitcoin without requiring the entire network to adopt those changes.
Think of Drivechains as service roads attached to the main road. When the freeway is congested, motorists can exit the freeway and travel on the service road at different speed limits, then re-enter the freeway when it is clear. In this way, the highway never changes, yet more traffic is handled more efficiently and the journey becomes more flexible for everyone.
Seven Drivechains are already in development, Sztorc said at X, including a privacy chain modeled on Zcash, a prediction market called Truthcoin, a decentralized exchange called CoinShift and a quantum-resistant chain called Photon.
The controversial part attached to Satoshi coins
Sztorc wants to use coins that would have gone to Satoshi Nakamoto’s corresponding addresses on the new eCash chain to bring investors on board before the fork goes live, a decision he calls necessary, but one that has outraged the community and some are calling it outright theft.
A potential hard fork would bring Bitcoin’s entire transaction history to the new chain. So every bitcoin balance, including Satoshi’s 1.1 million bitcoin sitting untouched in wallets that have moved those coins, would show up as a corresponding eCash balance on the new chain.
According to the plan, less than half of the Satoshi-equivalent eCash coins will be allocated to investors today. The exact mechanism of how this is done is still unclear. However, since eCash does not yet exist, the pre-hard fork allocation appears to be a promised credit after a successful hard fork.
The plan, he claims, will ensure collaborators have a tangible incentive to get involved early, build momentum and complete work ahead of launch. Without this mechanism, the project can turn into a “zombie project” that is shipped unfinished. Worse, it can become a centralized project, where a small group of developers gets overall control over the direction of the chain.
However, the industry’s reaction has been negative.
“Taking Satoshi coins is theft and disrespectful, and eCash is already used for Lightning payments with Cashu and Fedi. These are bad choices,” said Bitcoin lawyer Peter McCormack.
Josh Ellithorpe, chief technology officer at Pixelated Ink, expressed concern about the precedent it sets and how it could ultimately be a risk to everyone’s BTC holdings.
“eCash setting a precedent that they can and will steal coins. Now it’s Satoshi, but it could be anyone later. Also misrepresenting the BCH fork, stealing another project’s name and not having replay protection,” Ellithorpe said.
