Peter Sztorc, a veteran developer, has defended his Bitcoin hard fork plans via eCash and dismissed recent claims of plans to steal Satoshi’s 1.1 million BTC.
In a statement on April 28, Sztorc said clarified,
We do not take BTC from Satoshi. We **gift** Satoshi 600,000 eCash, instead of 1.1 million. That’s **600k more** than Satoshi got from Litecoin, Ethereum, Solana, Tether, etc. (i.e. 0).
A hard fork occurs when a blockchain splits into two separate entities, each operating independently. Sztorc’s eCash Bitcoin hard fork proposal was floated last week, and is scheduled to go live in August at block height 964,000.
According to his plan, the split will allow BTC holders to access eCash on a 1:1 basis. That means, oneAfter the hard fork, users with 2 BTC will also receive 2 eCash. The new chain will feature Ethereum-style Layer 2 drive chains, making it programmable for smart contracts.
According to Sztorc, the drivechains will enable various applications, including privacy, quantum resistance, prediction markets and more. But some community members have strongly rejected the hard fork plans.
The Bitcoin hard fork plan draws criticism
According to Peter McCormack, a BTC investor and chairman of Real Bedford FC, Sztorc’s plans were ‘poor choices’. He claimed that the hard fork’s planned 1:1 exchange of Satoshi Bitcoin for eCash was “theft and disrespectful.”
Additionally, the Lightning Network already uses a privacy feature called ecash, which could likely confuse the community.
However, in response, Sztorc claimed that Satoshi Nakamoto’s BTC coins will remain intact. However, around 600,000 of its 1.1 million ‘gifted’ eCash tokens will be sold to fund the project.
Will eCash be able to escape past the Bitcoin hard fork disruptions?
But this isn’t the first attempt to improve the Bitcoin network via hard forks. In 2017, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin Gold (BTG) were proposed to ensure cheap transfers and decentralized mining respectively.
BCH managed to enable faster, cheaper transactions. However, it did not build enough trust, leading to a drop in price and hash rate compared to the original Bitcoin network. On the other hand, Bitcoin Gold has become irrelevant after multiple security attacks of 51% at low hashrate.
In 2018, another hard fork, Bitcoin SV (BSV), also failed to gain traction in realizing larger blocks (up to 2 GB) to enable massive data and millions of transactions. Top exchanges like Coinbase have delisted the token.
In fact, other proposals such as The hard fork of Mount Goxnever even saw the light of day. It remains to be seen whether eCash will escape the pitfalls of previous hard forks.
Final summary
- Peter Sztorc clarified that the eCash Bitcoin hard fork is a 1:1 ‘gift’ of tokens and not a theft of Satoshi’s BTC.
- However, the community raised concerns about ethics and viability ahead of the August implementation.