Paul Sztorc’s Bitcoin fork, ECX, has advanced rapidly through its Alpha phase after launching at block height 963648. As of 9 a.m. EDT on Sunday, August 23, the network mined more than 25,092 blocks in roughly 13 hours.
Because the network's difficulty began at 1—mirroring Bitcoin's launch in 2009—block intervals were exceptionally fast initially. Following multiple difficulty adjustments every 2,016 blocks, the network difficulty climbed to 16.78 million. Hashrate metrics indicate miners contributed 3.53 petahash per second (PH/s) to the ECX chain.
Mining activity is distributed across several pools, with Ecashpool-alpha leading the field alongside other participants such as Kikko, L2L Pool, Nurserypool, Ckpool, Solo, Guilastuce, BIP300.xyz, Layertree, and Avonpool. Participants are utilizing various hardware setups, ranging from older Antminer models to other brand devices, to secure Alpha rewards.
Despite the initial mining activity and the availability of a small selection of wallets, the ecash (ECX) asset remains unpriced and is not yet listed on cryptocurrency exchanges. Practice coins mined during this phase can later be burned for a share of the permanent ECX network, which is slated to arrive at mainnet around October 31, 2026, marking the 18th anniversary of Bitcoin’s white paper.
