Long-time Bitcoin developer Paul Sztorc has been trying to overhaul Bitcoin's architecture since 2015, but the broader community hasn’t budged.

So now he has proposed a dramatic step, called eCash hardfork, that 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.

The community, however, is criticizing the funding part, which involves reassigning coins linked to Bitcoin’s missing founder, Satoshi Nakamoto.

What is a hard fork?

Think of a hard fork like a railway line splitting into two. Trains start from the same station, but at some point the line splits, helping trains reach completely different destinations.

When a group of developers cannot reach consensus on a proposed change to Bitcoin’s code, they copy the existing blockchain and launch it as a separate chain, which shares Bitcoin’s entire history up to the point of the split, but diverges after the split, moving forward with its own rules, features, token and direction.

That's precisely 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 native token, BCH.

The technical dispute centered on Bitcoin's 1MB block size limit, which caps the number of transactions that can be processed every 10 minutes when new blocks are added to the blockchain. Hence, some favoured 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 entirely,” 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 one critical addition called Drivechains, a scaling architecture Sztorc first proposed in 2015 and formally submitted to Bitcoin developers as BIP300 and BIP301 in 2017 and 2019, respectively.

Drivechains are sidechains tethered to the Bitcoin blockchain, allowing 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 capabilities on top of Bitcoin without requiring the entire network to adopt those changes.

Think of Drivechains as service roads attached to the main highway. When the highway is congested, drivers can exit the highway and travel on the service road at different speed limits, then re-enter the highway when it's clear. 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 on X, including a privacy chain modelled on Zcash, a prediction market called Truthcoin, a decentralised exchange called CoinShift, and a quantum-resistant chain called Photon.

The controversial part linked to Satoshi coins

Sztorc wants to use coins that would have gone to Satoshi Nakamoto's equivalent addresses on the new eCash chain to bring investors on board before the fork goes live, a decision he calls necessary but which has riled the community, with some 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 noved moved these coins, would show up as an equivalent eCash balance on the new chain.

As per the plan, fewer than half of the Satoshi-equivalent eCash coins will be assigned to investors today. The precise mechanism of how it's being done remains unclear. But since eCash doesn't yet exist, the pre-hard fork assign seems to be a promised credit following a successful hard fork.

The plan, he argues, will ensure collaborators have a tangible incentive to get involved early, building momentum and completing work ahead of launch. Without this mechanism, the project can turn into a "zombie project" that ships unfinished. Worse, it could become a centralized project, where a small group of developers gains outsized control over the chain's direction.

The industry response, however, has been negative.

“Taking Satoshi coins is theft and disrespectful, and eCash is already used for Lightning payments with Cashu and Fedi. Those are poor choices,” Bitcoin advocate Peter McCormack said.

Josh Ellithorpe, chief technology officer at Pixelated Ink, expressed concerns about the precedent it sets and how it could eventually be a risk to everyone’s BTC holdings.

“eCash, setting the 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.