Bitcoiner developer Paul Sztorc introduces hard fork eCash(hard fork) This includes a portion of the coins belonging to Satoshi Nakamoto being reallocated to investors prior to launch.
and hard fork It is a split of Bitcoin that copies the entire network history at a specific point in time, creating a new independent chain. According to the eCash website, at the time, forkthe new project’s software reads each Bitcoin address and credit balance Equivalent eCash in a 1:1 ratio Send to the same address in the new network. The original Bitcoin (BTC) is not changed or moved.
According to eCash documents, approximately 550,000 BTC coins are associated with the “Patoshi” pattern (speculated to be related to the first block mined by Satoshi) Manually assigned to accredited investors Fund your project before it launches. This means that the initial distribution of new assets will not be proportional only to Bitcoin holders.
A developer statement shared on X today, April 24th, claims that this decision is aimed at preventing forks from becoming “born empty” from an economic standpoint. Mr. Stork confirmed this decision. “It’s definitely going to be controversial.” And he justified it as an alternative to what he described as a “zombie project” with no room for advance participation.
Meanwhile, Sztorc explained that the new project nodes will be “nearly exact clones” of Bitcoin core software code and will use the same mining algorithm (SHA-256).
The eCash site shows a countdown to a watershed set in August 2026 around block 964,000.
What does this fork want? And why was it proposed?
The project proponent believes that this hard fork Responding to the definition of Bitcoin rather than responding to Bitcoin’s technical limitations as a matter of governance and culture within the community;. Along these lines, the eCash website points out that “it’s not the BTC code that’s broken, it’s the BTC community.”
According to Sztorc, Bitcoin development has stalled for the following reasons: Participant conservative decisions He added that this situation is hampering the adoption of the changes.
In his approach, creating new networks is a way to introduce these changes without relying on the consensus of the current ecosystem.
Similarly, the eCash site states: The goal is Restore competition between networks It allows for technological experimentation without directly modifying Bitcoin. Under this premise, eCash acts as an alternative where different second-tier solutions compete with each other from the start.
Sztorc reported that the hard fork will initially enable the BIP-300 and 301 standards (written by Sztorc itself) aimed at building sidechains (side chain) is fixed to the main network. His team is currently developing seven of these chains, all of which will operate under a unified mining model (merged miningin English), mainnet miners also process sidechain blocks and receive additional revenue without additional hardware.
In that sense, the eCash team also argues that Bitcoin already has the necessary technical tools to scale. but the community hasn’t implemented them. Therefore, rather than modifying the base code directly, this proposal aims to launch parallel networks that adopt these changes from the beginning.
Finally, Sztorc himself revealed in his publication that the term “eCash” is common and was already used in the 80s and 90s by DigiCash’s Chaumian eCash system, the XEC cryptocurrency (currently 164th in market capitalization), and the Cashhu custody project.
He said the team acquired the domain eCash.com and is happy with the name, and is also offering trial software.
(Tag translation) Bitcoin (BTC)
