Paul Sztorc, founder and CEO of LayerTwo Labs and the author of Bitcoin Improvement Proposals 300 and 301, said in a series of X posts on April 24 that he is helping launch a new Bitcoin hard fork called eCash in August. According to Sztorc, the fork will split existing BTC holdings on a one-to-one basis, meaning bitcoin holders would receive an equal amount of eCash at launch. The announcement immediately drew attention because it pairs a familiar hard-fork distribution model with a more contentious plan to reassign part of the so-called Patoshi-era coin supply to early investors before the network goes live.
Sztorc Details August Launch of eCash
In his X thread, Sztorc said eCash’s base layer is intended to remain close to Bitcoin Core. “Our L1 Node… is a near-copy of Bitcoin Core,” he wrote. “It is Sha256d mined. [It] forks via a one-time difficulty-reset — to its minimum value. (So, mining will be crazy at first.)” He added that seed nodes, network magic, and branding details would be changed, but said the codebase would continue merging Bitcoin Core updates over time.
Sztorc also said the fork is designed to activate BIP300/301 using CUSF, which he described as a way to avoid modifying the underlying layer-one code. In the post, he wrote: “The L1 will activate Bip300/301 via CUSF — the core untouched soft fork. So, no lines of code will be changed, on the L1. The activation client will be published periodically. We will do several bug bounty contests this summer.” He further said the client would be frozen 30 days before the fork date.
On the project website, eCash is framed less as a technical break from Bitcoin than as a governance and community split. “The hard fork is NOT needed for any technical reason,” the site says. “It is not the BTC code that is broken — it is the BTC community. We need to bet against that community. So — we need a new coin.” The same page says the project plans to keep layer one “identical to Bitcoin Core for as long as possible” while adding drivechains and changing replay behavior through an optional extra transaction byte.
Drivechain Push and Patoshi Plan Draw Fire
A central part of Sztorc’s pitch is the inclusion of drivechains from day one. In his X post, he said, “Yes, there will be Drivechains: We have 7 in developement right now. Users can also submit their own. Drivechain is a vision of ‘competing L2s’ — this avoids the ‘dev capture’ problem.” He also claimed those layer-twos are merged mined and include use cases ranging from privacy and prediction markets to decentralized exchange infrastructure and identity services.
The website expands that argument into a broader critique of Bitcoin’s current development path. “The upside is enormous: global scalability, privacy, competition, rapid improvement and adoption,” the site says. “In fact, it may be a matter of life or death, for Bitcoin.” It also argues that eCash could serve as a fallback if Bitcoin does not adopt BIP300/301, while acknowledging that Bitcoin adopting those proposals could reduce or eliminate the need for the fork.
The most controversial element, however, may be Sztorc’s proposal to manually reassign some Patoshi-pattern coins to investors before launch. In a separate X post, he said, “Satoshi has 1.1M coins in the so called ‘patoshi’ pattern. We will be manually reassigning some of these coins (fewer than half) to investors today.” He acknowledged the move would be disputed, adding: “This will no doubt be a controversial decision. But I think it is necessary, and in fact, ideal.” On the eCash website, the plan is described as a “Satoshi Half-Airdrop,” with roughly 550,000 of the estimated 1.1 million coins allocated to supporters and investors on the forked chain, not on Bitcoin itself. Sztorc argues that this would not transfer any BTC, but the proposal is likely to intensify debate around legitimacy, distribution, and investor alignment ahead of the fork.
For now, eCash remains a proposed August hard fork backed publicly by Sztorc and presented through his X posts and the newly launched project website. The technical outline is relatively clear: a Bitcoin-derived base layer, a one-time difficulty reset, transaction replay controls, and BIP300/301-enabled drivechains. What remains far less settled is whether the market, miners, exchanges, and the wider Bitcoin community will support the project — especially given the planned Patoshi reassignment and Sztorc’s explicit framing of eCash as a challenge to Bitcoin’s existing culture rather than its code.
AI Transparency Note: This article was prepared with the assistance of an AI system based on the sources listed and was reviewed, edited, and approved by a human editor before publication. All quotes, data points, and factual claims are intended to be grounded in the cited source material; however, errors cannot be ruled out entirely.
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