eCash fork's Alpha launch was a dress rehearsal. The real fork lands Oct. 31

The eCash fork hit its first milestone on Aug. 23 and almost nothing happened. That's the story. The Alpha chain produced a block at height 963,648, matching Bitcoin's own block height at that moment. But it wasn't the real fork. It was a rehearsal.

The permanent 1:1 ECX allocation doesn't land until Oct. 31, around Bitcoin block 973,728. The revised roadmap puts Beta near Sept. 20 at block 967,680. Both Alpha and Beta produce practice pECX tokens, not the real thing. Founder Paul Sztorc says 1,000 pECX can be burned for 10 ECX at Mainnet. That's a 100:1 ratio, which tells you exactly how much weight these test tokens carry.

Bitcoin itself never blinked. Mempool.space resolved block 963,648 to a clean hash with a timestamp of 2026-08-23 01:48:47. The Alpha explorer flagged a stale competing block at the opening height, which is textbook young-network behavior. The chart shows a test chain running alongside Bitcoin, not replacing it.

Here's the part that matters for holders. Exchanges kept Bitcoin services running through the Alpha window. GMO Coin said covered Bitcoin services would continue and it won't touch pECX or ECX during Alpha and Beta. Coincheck, SBI VC Trade and Zaif published similar continuity plans but left ECX crediting, listing or handling undecided. That's a quiet signal. They don't see this as a real event yet.

But the production handoff is far from finished. The project's integration guide, last updated Aug. 11, still treats 963,648 as the production fork point and labels key values as drynet4 parameters. The final fork hash, software branch or tag and replay scheme haven't been published. Coin-splitting guidance suggests an opt-in nLockTime of 499999999 but tells integrators to verify before launch.

So what did Aug. 23 prove? The network can produce blocks. That's about it. The real test lands Oct. 31, and the unresolved replay details are where the actual risk sits. Exchanges that coast through Alpha could face a compressed decision window in October. Historically speaking, that's when things get messy.

The invalidation point sits at Oct. 31. If the final fork hash and replay scheme aren't locked down with enough lead time, exchanges will freeze Bitcoin services rather than risk a bad split. That's the move to watch. The chart is the chart, but the deadline is the deadline.