Bitcoin developer Paul Sztorc is proposing a new Bitcoin fork called eCash, reviving his Drivechains push with a controversial funding plan.

What’s proposed

CoinDesk, DL News, and Protos each reported that Sztorc wants to launch eCash in August 2026 as a separate chain that copies Bitcoin’s ledger and gives BTC holders a 1:1 balance on the new network. The technical pitch is to activate Drivechains, his sidechain design for moving BTC into feature-rich secondary chains without changing Bitcoin’s base layer.

The dispute is over funding. All three reports say Sztorc wants to pre-assign part of the new chain’s Satoshi-linked balances to early investors or collaborators before launch, with the reported pool limited to fewer than half of the so-called Patoshi coins.

Why it matters

This does not change Bitcoin itself unless users, miners, and exchanges choose to support the fork. But it is still notable because it pairs a serious scaling agenda with a direct challenge to one of Bitcoin’s strongest social norms: dormant balances should remain untouched even on descendant chains.

For now, the conservative read is simple: eCash is a proposal, not an adopted Bitcoin upgrade.