According to a Foresight News report citing Bitcoin.com, the Bitcoin hard fork project ecash (ECX), led by Paul Sztorc, founder of Bitcoin sidechain development company Layertwo Labs, has released its roadmap for going live. Bitcoin holders will receive an equal amount of ECX in a 1:1 ratio at the snapshot time; the existing BTC will remain unchanged. The project runs independently of the Bitcoin mainnet and uses the same SHA-256d mining algorithm, but has its own network identifiers, ports, and mining difficulty settings.

The project will be carried out in three phases: the Alpha phase has already started around Bitcoin block height 963648 for participants to test the software, mining, and wallets. The Beta phase is planned for September 20, around block height 967680, and will focus on integration testing among exchanges, wallet providers, miners, and custodial institutions. The permanent mainnet is scheduled to launch on October 31, around block height 973728. It coincides with the 18th anniversary of Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin whitepaper release. At that time, permanent ECX balances will be generated, and the first dedicated sidechain will be launched.

ECX plans to go live with seven dedicated sidechains, including Thunder for high-throughput payments, Zside for private transactions, Bitnames for decentralized identity, Bitassets for token issuance, Photon for post-quantum signatures, Truthcoin for prediction markets, and Coinshift for cross-chain transactions. The project originates from the Drivechains proposal previously put forward by Sztorc (BIP 300/301). That proposal had not previously been activated on Bitcoin via a soft fork.

About 1.1 million early Bitcoin addresses associated with Satoshi (Patoshi mode). Of these, around 600,000 addresses will still receive ECX, while an additional ~500,000 ECX will be distributed to early investors and development funding via special transactions. This does not affect the original BTC held at those addresses. Users who self-custody BTC will be able to obtain the corresponding ECX directly at that time; users with BTC stored on exchanges will need to wait to see whether the platform supports the fork and the distribution arrangements.