eCash

What it is

eCash is a planned hardfork of Bitcoin at BTC block height ~963,648 — on or around August 22, 2026 — that activates drivechains (BIP 300 / 301). It's led by Paul Sztorc, author of BIP 300/301 and CEO of LayerTwo Labs. eCash starts from Bitcoin's exact ledger — same UTXO set, same addresses, same balances — and at the fork credits every BTC address an equivalent balance of a new coin, $ECX, one-for-one. In the project's words: "no claim, no airdrop form, no whitelist. Run a node, you have it." It is its own blockchain — not a token on Solana or Ethereum — and your existing BTC is untouched; eCash simply arrives alongside it at the same address, to sell, hold, or ignore.

Why hardfork Bitcoin

Per ecash.com, the fork isn't about broken code — the eCash L1 is a clone of Bitcoin Core. The argument is cultural and about governance: "no meaningful upgrade has shipped since taproot in 2021. Every proposal dies in review — good for stability, and fatal for progress." Sztorc's design lets Bitcoin add opt-in sidechains "without touching the main chain's rules," and Core has declined to adopt it. eCash ships those rules from block one so the sidechain vision no longer needs Core's approval — aiming, the project says, at the industry's two biggest problems: scalability and governance. Notably, the site says the team would abandon the fork if Bitcoin itself activated BIP 300/301.

What to expect on fork day

Your BTC is safe: "the fork does not move, modify, or touch your BTC in any way." The mechanics mirror the 2017 Bitcoin Cash split — same UTXO set, addresses, and balances. Because the two chains share history, a BTC transaction can briefly replay on eCash; a one-time coin split using the official wallet separates them automatically ("no technical knowledge required"), after which the chains operate independently. To bootstrap mining, difficulty drops once to its minimum, making the first ~2,016 blocks easy to CPU-mine before it climbs to a new equilibrium. LayerTwo Labs says working software already exists — a full node, wallet, and live signet (BitWindow) — to test before launch.

Sidechains from day one

Because BIP 300/301 are active at genesis, eCash is designed to launch with seven working drivechain sidechains: Thunder (payments), zSide (privacy), BitNames (identity), BitAssets (tokens & NFTs), Photon (quantum-resistant), Truthcoin (prediction markets), and CoinShift (swaps) — "everything Bitcoin can't do, each on its own chain, none of it forced onto the L1."

A contested plan

The project also proposes reassigning coins linked to Satoshi Nakamoto — but only on the new eCash chain, never on Bitcoin. Sztorc's framing is "we don't take a single BTC." This point, and the fork broadly, are actively debated; the descriptions above reflect the project's own stated position, not an endorsement.

Learn more

This summary is drawn from ecash.com's own pages — Why Hardfork, What to Expect, and the FAQ. Treat ecash.com as the canonical source as fork day approaches.

Note: eCash is a forthcoming and actively-debated project, and the framing above is the project's own. Specifics — the exact fork block, coin-split steps, and mining details — may change. Verify against ecash.com before acting on anything here. Nothing on this page is financial advice.