Paul Sztorc’s Bitcoin Fork ECX Rips Past 25,000 Blocks in Just 13 Hours

ECX Blasts Through 25,000 Blocks in 13 Hours

Bitcoin’s latest fork has kicked off its Alpha stage, with Drivechain creator Paul Sztorc’s ECX network going live at block height 963648. As of 9 a.m. Sunday, Aug. 23, the new network had already ripped through more than 25,000 blocks in barely 13 hours. Block intervals have been blisteringly fast because the network’s difficulty started at 1, just as Bitcoin did when it launched in 2009.

As of 9 a.m. EDT, after a barrage of difficulty changes every 2,016 blocks, ECX has watched its difficulty rocket to 16.78 million. Metrics currently show miners throwing 3.53 petahash per second (PH/s) at the ECX chain. If every miner were running the original Bitmain Antminer S19, the non-Pro model pushing 95 terahash per second (TH/s), that would equal nearly 36 Antminer S19s hammering away at Sztorc’s fork.

But miners can obviously deploy practically any old Antminer, including the vintage S9, alongside brands like Sealminers, Whatsminers, Bitaxes, Nerdaxes, or even the weakest hashrate-producing machines to chase the Alpha rewards. What immediately separates this fork from the failed BIP-110 fiasco earlier this month is the mining support. ECX is clearly attracting more miners willing to put actual hashrate behind the chain.