Solo mining for the eCash (ECX) hard fork
An independent solo mining pool for the LayerTwoLabs eCash chain — a Bitcoin hard fork activating drivechain rules in three phases.
URL: stratum+tcp://stratum.solofork.com:3333
Username: <your bc1… ECX address>
Password: xWhy solofork?
Sign your winning block
Register a coinbase OP_RETURN (75 B) and a coinbase scriptSig tag (64 B) that will land on-chain in every block this pool mines under your address. No pool preset — your bytes. Authorized by a BIP-322 signature from your address's key.
Difficulty that fits your rig
Set starting or fixed difficulty per address, and override per worker for mixed rigs — a Bitaxe at diff 256 alongside an S19j at 65536, under one payout. Vardiff still works when you want it; step out when you don't.
Solo, non-custodial
The coinbase pays your address directly on every block. No pool wallet, no PPLNS accounting, no minimum threshold, no batch. 2% donation to the operator via a separate coinbase output. That's the only cut.
Replay protection
Three-phase rollout
ECX activates in three stages, each at a Bitcoin difficulty-retarget boundary. Each activation resets difficulty to 1 and gets a brief bonanza window.
| Phase | Date | BTC block | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alpha | 2026-08-23 | 963,648 | Live — pool serving stratum |
| Beta | 2026-09-20 | 967,680 | Pending — pool image will be swapped |
| Full Release | 2026-10-31 | 973,728 | Production target — 18th anniversary of the whitepaper |
Alpha and Beta coins are labelled "practice money" by LayerTwoLabs — unlikely to be the same UTXO set that BTC holders receive at Full Release. Mine on solofork now for operational practice and dry-run; treat Full Release as the actual production launch.
The bonanza window is short — be online at phase activation
Each phase starts at minimum difficulty (1.0). Bitcoin's standard difficulty adjustment retargets every 2,016 blocks with a hard ±4× cap per epoch. Even if every epoch is mined instantly, diff goes 1 → 4 → 16 → 64 → 256 — not a single jump to equilibrium.
Alpha proved this out live: with ~3.5 PH/s arriving at activation, the first epoch closed in under an hour. Ballpark for the coming phases:
- Beta (Sep 20): similar or shorter — Alpha operators know what to expect, more capacity pointed on day one.
- Full Release (Oct 31): longest window in absolute terms — real hashrate arrives, but Sztorc has hinted difficulty at Full will be tuned from Alpha/Beta price+hashrate data rather than reset to 1. Watch for updates.
Practical implications for miners:
- Be connected at each phase activation. Five minutes late means missing most of the window.
- Expect heavy orphan rates during the rapid first epochs — multiple simultaneous block solutions, frequent reorgs. Coinbase outputs that never make the canonical chain are a normal artifact of mining at diff 1.
- Firmware matters. BraiinsOS / bosminer panics on low network difficulty and is unreliable through each phase-activation window. Use cgminer, vnish, LuxOS, or stock Antminer firmware for the first 24 hours of each phase — /connect has the full compatibility matrix.
What is the eCash fork?
"eCash" here refers to Paul Sztorc / LayerTwoLabs's Bitcoin hard fork — distinct from XEC, the chain that emerged from the Bitcoin Cash split. This fork activates BIP 300/301 (Drivechains) on a chain diverging from Bitcoin at each phase-activation block (963,648 → 967,680 → 973,728), resetting difficulty at each, and runs as the foundation for several merge-mined L2 sidechains (Thunder, Truthcoin, BitNames, BitAssets, CoinShift, Photon, ZSide).
The project is controversial: a portion of dormant "Patoshi" coins is planned to be reassigned to early investors, the name collides with the existing XEC chain, and BIP 300 has unresolved security concerns about hash-power-majority L2 fund seizure. We don't endorse the project — we mine it. You should form your own view before participating; resources below.
Sidechains on ECX alphanet
ECX activates BIP 300/301, reserving 256 slots on the main chain for merge-mined sidechains. LayerTwoLabs has published proposals for seven; none are producing blocks on alphanet as of 2026-08-25.
| Slot | Sidechain | Purpose | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | BitNames | Identity / DNS | no node reachable |
| 4 | BitAssets | User-issued tokens | no node reachable |
| 9 | Thunder | Scaling / high TPS | height 0 |
| 13 | Truthcoin | Prediction markets | no node reachable |
| 98 | ZSide | Privacy (Orchard) | no node reachable |
| 99 | Photon | Quantum resistance | no node reachable |
| 255 | CoinShift | Coin swap / mixing | no node reachable |
solofork mines ECX L1 only. Sidechain blocks are merge-mined separately via BMM through the enforcer — a solofork worker doesn't need any sidechain-specific configuration. No public sidechain explorers exist on alphanet yet; the LayerTwoLabs repos above are the current source of truth.
Resources
- explorer.alpha.ecash.ninja — canonical live Alpha block explorer
- alpha.ecash.ninja/info — network hub: DNS seed, snapshot URL, fork parameters
- ecash-com/bitcoin — L1 node source (Bitcoin Core v31.1 fork), branch
alphanet - ecash-com/fast-facts — project spec and FAQ
- t.me/DcInsiders — highest-signal channel for operational news
About this pool
Operated pseudonymously from the EU. Non-custodial by construction — coinbase pays your address directly, 2% donation output to the operator. Open-source stack: ghcr.io/ecash-com/bitcoin:alphanet + bip300301-enforcer + patched CKpool.
Contact: [email protected]. Full operator stance, patch list, and what we don't endorse: /about. Live API surface: /api/pool.status · /api/network.status · /api/blocks.json. Subsystem health: /status.