Paul Sztorc said ECX, the Bitcoin hard fork earlier described as eCash, will launch in three phases instead of a single Aug. 23 release. Alpha is set for Aug. 23 at Bitcoin block 963648, Beta for Sept. 20 at block 967680 and the permanent chain for Oct. 31 at block 973728, the 18th anniversary of Satoshi Nakamoto's publication of the Bitcoin white paper. Sztorc has described the project as a near-copy of Bitcoin Core that replicates Bitcoin's transaction history at a chosen block height, leaves the Bitcoin network unchanged and gives almost all BTC holders an equal amount of ECX, excluding Satoshi Nakamoto's portion. Tokens gathered on Alpha and Beta can be destroyed and exchanged for official ECX after the permanent chain launches, while replay protection will remain optional even though the official wallet will enable it and warn users that ignored prompts could cause Bitcoin transactions to be replayed on ECX. He said the staggered rollout is meant to help the project navigate what he called "LLM bug chaos," allow early price discovery before mining difficulty locks in, give traders a live environment to test ahead of mainnet and provide cover in case of major problems. Earlier reporting said the project centers on drivechains and merge-mined sidechains, while GMO Coin has warned of partial BTC trading suspensions around the fork and Sztorc has acknowledged controversy over a proposed pre-mine using part of the dormant "Patoshi"-pattern BTC. Sztorc said holders and exchanges now have a 12-week practice window before the full launch, with decisions ahead on wallet use, customer crediting and how mining difficulty behaves during the test phases. His announcement also comes as Bitcoin faces another fork proposal, BIP-110, that he said was estimated to occur at some point the same day.