Learn · Series stub
eCash and drivechain (coming soon)
The eCash fork is a separate August 2026 consensus event: a planned drivechain fork that splits from Bitcoin's shared history at a difficulty-reset height. Its activation client (a lightly patched Bitcoin Core, paired with a drivechain enforcer sidecar) forces the difficulty back to minimum at the fork height, which makes Bitcoin's own block at that exact height invalid to eCash nodes. That single rule is the entire split mechanism. A live dress rehearsal (the "Forknet" split) was scheduled at height 957,600 (approximately July 11), and the announced launch fork is near height 963,648 (approximately August 21). As of this 2026-07 eCash announcement, that height is expected to coincide with BIP-110's lock-in boundary, an unconfirmed alignment that could still shift. Heights are the clock here too; the dates follow the same client-source-aligned projection used across the BIP-110 pages, they drift with hashrate, and a minority fork can take far longer to reach any given height.
Unlike BIP-110, the eCash fork is not a change to Bitcoin's own rules; it is a new chain that shares Bitcoin's history up to the fork height. It keeps Bitcoin's network magic, default port, and address format, so eCash and Bitcoin nodes are not cleanly separated at the network layer, and it adds only a weak, opt-in transaction marker rather than strong replay protection. The replay and separation cautions in the replay and wallet safety article therefore apply in spirit to this event as well, though the exact mechanism differs and will be documented in the full section. The design choices, the coin-reassignment plans, and the merits of the fork are positions held by its proponents and its critics; this site describes the mechanics and takes no side.
This page is a stub. The eCash coverage is deliberately secondary while this site's primary focus is BIP-110, and it is sequenced after the BIP-110 education, read models, and live panels are in place. A full eCash section (mechanics, timeline, monitoring, and its own safety notes) will be promoted here, and to a top-level nav item, at section launch. Until then, treat the BIP-110 articles as the complete part of the series and this page as a placeholder for what is coming.
Sources
This stub draws on the separate eCash research refresh (verified 2026-07-02/03), not the BIP-110 technical walkthrough. Forward-looking heights, dates, and the replay-marker detail are flagged for reconfirmation because that research tracks an actively changing client. The full section will carry its own dated sources.