Bitcoin Developer Plans to 'Reassign' Coins Linked to Satoshi Nakamoto in Hard Fork

Bitcoin developer Paul Sztorc has projected a hard fork that would reassign immoderate of the earliest coins connected the archetypal crypto network—widely believed to beryllium to pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto—to investors successful a caller project.

The co-founder and CEO of LayerTwo Labs, Sztorc announced the project, called eCash, connected Friday. The program would “manually reassign” astir 500,000 of the astir 1.1 cardinal Bitcoin associated with the alleged “Patoshi pattern,” a mining signifier immoderate researchers judge is linked to Nakamoto.

“This volition nary uncertainty beryllium a arguable decision,” Sztorc wrote connected X. “But I deliberation it is necessary, and successful fact, ideal.”

Sztorc would not (and could not) determination the Satoshi-linked coins connected Bitcoin itself. Instead, eCash would make a abstracted blockchain that copies Bitcoin’s past and changes the ledger to delegate each but 600K of those coins to caller owners. Current on-chain Bitcoin (BTC) holders would besides person coins connected the eCash web equivalent to their holdings astatine the clip of the fork.

“Your coins volition split. For example, if you person 4.19 BTC, past you volition get 4.19 eCash,” helium wrote connected X. “You whitethorn merchantability your eCash—or support it. Or disregard it!”

Named aft the archetypal eCash, cryptographer David Chaum’s aboriginal integer wealth project, the caller fork is simply a callback to 1 of crypto’s earliest ideas. The archetypal eCash utilized cryptographic “blind signatures” to fto radical marque backstage physics payments, but DigiCash, Chaum’s institution processing the project, filed for bankruptcy successful 1998 aft the task failed to summation wide adoption.

“It’s not Satoshi’s Bitcoin, it’s conscionable [unspent transaction outputs] that are presumed to beryllium to Satoshi that are being cloned and modified onto a wholly antithetic network,” Bitcoin developer and Casa Chief Security Officer Jameson Lopp told Decrypt.

Lopp dismissed the determination arsenic a publicity stunt, calling it “clever outrage marketing.”

According to Loop, specified a reassignment could lone hap connected Bitcoin itself if the broader web of developers agreed to follow the fork.

“If the full Bitcoin ecosystem decided to migrate to a hard fork that reassigned Satoshi’s coins to keys that different radical controlled, past sure, it’s theoretically possible,” Lopp said.

Sztorc has said the reassignment would let aboriginal supporters to put successful the task earlier its planned August launch. He has argued the determination is needed to support the concatenation from becoming a “zombie” task without capable superior oregon contributors.

Bitcoin has divided before. Bitcoin Cash launched successful 2017 aft a quality implicit scaling, splitting disconnected and creating a caller network. Ethereum divided successful 2016 aft the DAO hack, with astir web backers choosing to reverse the transactions with stolen funds portion Ethereum Classic kept the archetypal chain. Both Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC) person been acold little invaluable and fashionable than their respective archetypal coins and networks.

The eCash website says the concatenation is expected to motorboat successful astir 119 days and volition see “Drivechain” scaling web support, with 7 sidechains successful development.

“The upside is enormous: planetary scalability, privacy, competition, accelerated improvement, and adoption,” Sztorc wrote connected the eCash website. “In fact, it whitethorn beryllium a substance of beingness oregon decease for Bitcoin. The downside is small: immoderate drama, positive each Bitcoiner gets immoderate escaped money.”

Sztorc did not instantly respond to a petition for remark by Decrypt.