What are drivechains?
A drivechain is a Bitcoin sidechain secured by Bitcoin miners instead of a company or a federation. Drivechains were proposed by Paul Sztorc in 2015 as BIP 300 and BIP 301. They let developers build almost anything (big blocks, private transactions, tokens, prediction markets) on a separate chain, while the main chain stays simple and unchanged.
eCash (ECX) is the first network to turn drivechains on.
Click here to see the current eleven (11) drivechains live on eCash.
Drivechains at a glance
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What it is: A sidechain that Bitcoin miners secure and get paid by
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Proposed by: Paul Sztorc, 2015
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Specifications: BIP 300 (hashrate escrow) and BIP 301 (blind merged mining)
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Status on Bitcoin: Never activated — BIP 300 is still in draft
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Status on eCash: Active from day one
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Peg: Two-way. Coins move from the main chain to a sidechain and back
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Native coin: ECX. Sidechains do not have their own money
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Live on eCash at launch: 7 drivechains
The Problem Drivechains Solve
Bitcoin can't change
Changing Bitcoin's rules takes years of debate and rarely succeeds. Drivechain itself was proposed in 2015 and never activated. Good ideas die in committee.
Sidechains today need trust
Existing Bitcoin sidechains are federated. A group of known companies holds the keys. If they collude or get compromised, the pegged coins are at risk.
Layer 2s pull fees away from miners
Payment channels move activity off-chain, and the fees go with it. Miners fund the security of the whole system, so that trade-off matters long term.
Drivechains answer all three. No base-layer change is needed to add a new one. No federation holds the coins. And miners collect the fees from every sidechain.
How Drivechains actually work
1 . A sidechain is proposed.
Miners vote it into a numbered slot. No permission from any company is required.
2 .You peg in. You send ECX to a special address.
The coins are locked on the main chain and appear on the sidechain.
3 . You use the sidechain.
It has its own rules: bigger blocks, private transactions, whatever it was built for. Miners secure it through blind merged mining, so they earn its fees without running its software.
4 . You peg out.
Withdrawals are bundled and voted on by miners over a long window (13,000 blocks on eCash, roughly three months). The delay is deliberate: it gives everyone time to spot a fraudulent withdrawal.
The Honest Tradeoff
Drivechains replace federation trust with miner trust. Miners vote on withdrawals, so a majority of hashrate could, in theory, approve a fraudulent one.
Three things make that unattractive: the 13,000-block window means the theft is visible for months before it completes, the attempt would be public and coordinated, and miners hold long-lived, chain-specific hardware. Critics still consider this the core objection to drivechains. Anyone evaluating ECX should understand it.
The Honest Tradeoff
Thunder — Scaling
A big-block, prunable sidechain built for enough throughput for 8 billion people to transact daily. No channels, no inbound liquidity, no failed routes. → /drivechains/thunder
zSide — Privacy
Zcash-grade zk-SNARKs on eCash, built on the Orchard shielded-pool design. Sender, receiver, and amount are all hidden. → /drivechains/zside
BitNames — Identity
Namecoin-style name registration and ownership. A decentralized identity layer aimed at replacing ICANN, with names nobody can revoke. → /drivechains/bitnames
BitAssets — Tokens
The issuance layer for stablecoins, tokens, and tokenized assets. New assets settle here while the underlying money stays ECX. → /drivechains/bitassets
BitNames — Identity
Namecoin-style name registration and ownership. A decentralized identity layer aimed at replacing ICANN, with names nobody can revoke. → /drivechains/bitnames
Truthcoin — Prediction markets
Peer-to-peer prediction markets, and the idea that started it all. Paul Sztorc has gone by "Truthcoin" since long before drivechains existed. → /drivechains/truthcoin
Photon — Quantum resistance
Quantum-resistant signatures, available on day one. Insurance you can opt into on your own schedule instead of waiting for a contentious base-layer upgrade. → /drivechains/photon
CoinShift — Trustless swaps
Peer-to-peer swaps between sidechain coins and outside chains, with no exchange in the middle. It supports Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin as parent chains, and ships with a GUI, a CLI, and a JSON-RPC server. → /drivechains/coinshift
Snowside — Fast EVM
An Avalanche EVM subnet for eCash, with native ECX gas, blind merged mining, and USDC bridging via ICM. → /drivechains/snowside
Elements — Smart Contracts
Blockstream's Elements plus OP_CAT, exotic sigs, and CTV, ported to a drivechain. Known as Elements Plus. → /drivechains/elements
RISCy — Unknown
Not much is known about this drivechain, currently. → /drivechains/riscy
Freebank — Unknown
Not much is known about this drivechain, currently. → /drivechains/freebank