
Founder and CEO @LayerTwoLabs | Creator https://xitter.cf/t.co/IHe4l8yOT4 | Blogger https://xitter.cf/t.co/KdoSQm3aD5 | Author BIP 300/301
Connecticut, USA
Joined December 2013
- Tweets38.6K
- Following436
- Followers36.7K
- Likes56.3K
Pinned Tweet
BREAKING: New Bitcoin Fork
I am helping create a **new Bitcoin Hardfork** -- dropping this August, called "eCash".
- Your coins will split. For example, if you have 4.19 BTC, then you will get 4.19 eCash.
- You may sell your eCash -- or keep it. Or ignore it!
Vegas:
- Yes, I will be in Vegas next week.
- No, I won't mention this, on stage -- (that would be rude).
Our L1 Node...
- is a near-copy of Bitcoin Core.
- is Sha256d mined.
- forks via a one-time difficulty-reset -- to its minimum value. (So, mining will be crazy at first.)
- Yes, we will change the seed nodes, the name, the network magic, etc.
Codewise, the L1 will remain compatible with Bitcoin Core:
- We will continue to merge their changes (even the bad ones).
- The L1 will activate Bip300/301 via CUSF -- the core untouched soft fork. So, no lines of code will be changed, on the L1.
- The activation client will be published periodically (link below).
- We will do several bug bounty contests this summer.
- The client will be frozen 30 days prior to the fork.
Yes, there will be Drivechains:
- We have 7 in developement right now.
- Users can also submit their own.
- Drivechain is a vision of "competing L2s" -- this avoids the "dev capture" problem.
- These L2s are all Merged Mined. Miners automatically get free $.
- Our L2s are already capable of planetary scale, and onboarding 8 billion users.
- We also have a zCash-like L2, with strong privacy.
- Other L2s: Truthcoin (Prediction Markets), CoinShift (Decentralized Exchange), BitAssets (NFT etc), BitNames (Identity), Photon (Quantum Resistant).
Unlike BCH (the 2017 fork):
- There is no "Bitcoin" in the name. New name, new brand.
- You are getting advanced warning (4 months).
- We are replaying all txns (at first). We will release a coin-splitter tool.
- This is a permanent & sustainable fix to Bitcoin's problems (instead of a 1 MB to 8 MB temporary fix).
- Back in 2017, the BTC tech stack was strong, and expectations for Lightning were strong. Today, it is the reverse.
Video to follow.
Paul Sztorc retweeted
So basically, today PHP got two critical bugs that let anyone run code on your server without even logging in, which is bad, and then the details leaked before the patch was even out, which is worse, and it works on WordPress and MediaWiki and Magento and Joomla and Laravel, and Censys says like 1.5 million servers are running a version with no fix, so the NSA was like "take your system offline," and the FBI was like "take your system offline," and CISA and the UK and CERT-EU were all like "take your system offline," and then the Prime Minister of Japan, the actual Prime Minister, posted at 5:55 in the morning telling 48.8 million people to take their system offline, so everyone took their system offline, like the Dutch cybersecurity agency took its own website offline, and the Dutch parliament went offline, and the Port of Rotterdam went offline, and Finland and France and Denmark started pulling government sites, and Wikipedia went down, and Archive.org went down, and Asana and GOG and Something Awful went down, and the University of Vienna's webmail went down for some reason, and that's just PHP. Because GitLab also dropped a CVSS 10.0, which is the highest score they give out, for a bug that's been there since 2014, so that's every self-hosted GitLab for twelve years, and then LiteLLM 1.107.0 got hijacked and shipped a credential stealer and a remote access trojan in every single wheel and the Docker images, including latest, and you didn't even have to import it, just installing it was enough, and it's the second time this year, and then Railway paused every deployment on the entire platform because someone got into the environment variables, so now everyone has to rotate every secret they've ever stored there, and TiDB Cloud said someone was walking around inside with stolen credentials for basically a month and an extortion group says they took 10.6 terabytes, and Zeabur got breached for the second time in two months and is just shutting down, like the whole company, and Node.js patched remote code execution and a TLS bypass, and CISA says Plex is being actively exploited, and someone took over 300 Tor exit relays to steal SSH passwords, and SafePay ransomware has hit over 600 critical infrastructure orgs, and India's biggest bank filed a data loss incident, and Japan has been in an official state of emergency in cyberspace since October 9, which honestly explains the 5:55 AM post. Oh, and eMudhra, a certificate authority that's issued over 60 million certificates, whose entire job is proving websites are who they say they are, was supposed to be using private keys that are random numbers over a hundred digits long, and one of them was 4. Just 4. And the others were like 66 and 237. Anyway, it's Wednesday.
Paul Sztorc retweeted
🚨DEFCON 1🚨
In a few hours, a critical vulnerability that affects ~70% of web sites will be disclosed. It allows an attacker to upload and execute arbitrary code.
It's probably best if you stop browsing the internet for the rest of the week.
xitter.cf/ThePHPF/status/2112633…
Paul Sztorc retweeted
Apparently there’s a patch for the critical PHP vulnerabilities but a few things that are alarming.
1) Many websites that use php with sensitive information are simply abandoned. There will be no upgrade. That means they’re going to get pwned and leaked. That’s a LOT of the internet
2) This requires active participants to upgrade their sites that even know about this vulnerability. If you’re on X you’re at the tip of the tip of the spear. Most people don’t know about this.
3) Anthropic says that this is ONE of SEVERAL critical vulnerabilities that they have found. Which means there’s more chaos coming.
TLDR: A large portion of the unmaintained internet is about to be pwned and god help us all or something like that.
OpenAI models helped researchers—operating as part of our Patch the Planet initiative—discover critical security flaws in PHP, an open-source programming language used to run an estimated 70% of websites.
Over the past two months, we led a coalition of maintainers, researchers, and security providers to prepare fixes and protections ahead of disclosure. This duration was necessary because the fix was quite intricate and required a major change to the PHP engine. Every site using PHP can now safely upgrade their version to stay secure, in addition to applying mitigations from various security vendors.
Due to the severity of these flaws and PHP’s widespread use, we consider this bug to be one of the most impactful vulnerabilities in recent memory. It also marks a new phase, where AI can find security bugs with internet-scale impact.
This is an example of the Defender’s Window in action: to our knowledge, frontier AI was able to find this vulnerability ahead of attackers, giving defenders time to prepare.
openai.com/index/coordinated…
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
Wiz Research wasn't the first one to discover the exploit. An independent researcher first discovered it: x.com/calif_io/statu…
a critical vulnerability was just discovered in PHP. the language that runs 80% of the internet
severity score: 9.2 out of 10. that’s about as bad as it gets
what can an attacker do with this? take full admin control of a server. steal entire databases. passwords, credit cards, payment histories. plant malware and use the server to attack other systems
but here’s the terrifying part that most people missed
the moment the patch drops tonight attackers are expected to use AI to reverse engineer what was fixed within 15 minutes
15 minutes. that’s the window between the fix going live and automated attacks launching worldwide
every online store, booking site, and corporate system running PHP that doesn’t update in those 15 minutes becomes a target
this isn’t just a developer problem. if you’ve ever signed up to a website, entered your card details, or created an account online your data is sitting on servers that might be vulnerable right now
and someone just publicly dropped the working exploit on twitter before the patch was even ready. gave every attacker on earth a head start
engineers worldwide are pulling all-nighters tonight to patch their systems before the attacks begin
change your passwords on any service that matters to you. enable 2FA everywhere. and watch out for fake “maintenance” or “password reset” emails over the next few days
the internet is about to have a very long night
The best way to ensure that you get these coins
Is to self custody your BTC
You should be doing that anyway!
BREAKING: New Bitcoin Fork
I am helping create a **new Bitcoin Hardfork** -- dropping this August, called "eCash".
- Your coins will split. For example, if you have 4.19 BTC, then you will get 4.19 eCash.
- You may sell your eCash -- or keep it. Or ignore it!
Vegas:
- Yes, I will be in Vegas next week.
- No, I won't mention this, on stage -- (that would be rude).
Our L1 Node...
- is a near-copy of Bitcoin Core.
- is Sha256d mined.
- forks via a one-time difficulty-reset -- to its minimum value. (So, mining will be crazy at first.)
- Yes, we will change the seed nodes, the name, the network magic, etc.
Codewise, the L1 will remain compatible with Bitcoin Core:
- We will continue to merge their changes (even the bad ones).
- The L1 will activate Bip300/301 via CUSF -- the core untouched soft fork. So, no lines of code will be changed, on the L1.
- The activation client will be published periodically (link below).
- We will do several bug bounty contests this summer.
- The client will be frozen 30 days prior to the fork.
Yes, there will be Drivechains:
- We have 7 in developement right now.
- Users can also submit their own.
- Drivechain is a vision of "competing L2s" -- this avoids the "dev capture" problem.
- These L2s are all Merged Mined. Miners automatically get free $.
- Our L2s are already capable of planetary scale, and onboarding 8 billion users.
- We also have a zCash-like L2, with strong privacy.
- Other L2s: Truthcoin (Prediction Markets), CoinShift (Decentralized Exchange), BitAssets (NFT etc), BitNames (Identity), Photon (Quantum Resistant).
Unlike BCH (the 2017 fork):
- There is no "Bitcoin" in the name. New name, new brand.
- You are getting advanced warning (4 months).
- We are replaying all txns (at first). We will release a coin-splitter tool.
- This is a permanent & sustainable fix to Bitcoin's problems (instead of a 1 MB to 8 MB temporary fix).
- Back in 2017, the BTC tech stack was strong, and expectations for Lightning were strong. Today, it is the reverse.
Video to follow.
Paul Sztorc retweeted
‼️ PHP UPDATE: 4chan has gone read-only and Something Awful has shut its forums as American sites brace for the PHP patch.
4chan says it is "temporarily read-only while we await an urgent PHP security update."
Something Awful says the flaw "allows for the kind of hacking you see in movies (but in real life)."
Bookmarking service Pinboard, game publisher Choice of Games, history site Damn Interesting and the explain xkcd wiki are offline too, as is art site Fur Affinity.
DeviantArt is also down "for maintenance" but has not said why.
PHP's fix is due at 14:00 UTC, 10am in New York.
Paul Sztorc retweeted
An LA hospitality group runs 25 bars, many of them right by Dodger Stadium. Every extra playoff game means packed bars. An early exit means lost revenue they were counting on.
So they hedged it. They put $60,000 on Kalshi on the Dodgers *not* making the World Series.
The Dodgers lost the NLCS to the Brewers. The position returned nearly 2x, helping cover the playoff business that *never* came.
A Columbia law professor told Fortune it works like “a form of bespoke insurance.”
Read the full story here: fortune.com/2026/10/19/predi…
Paul Sztorc retweeted
How do you upgrade a $1.5 TRILLION network without compromising what makes it secure? 🟠
Vlad Costea, Sjors Provoost, Paul Sztorc, and Rob Hamilton tackle the future of #Bitcoin upgrades, forks, and scaling at Bitcoin Amsterdam.
📍 Nov 5 | 2:30 PM | Orange Stage
DON'T MISS THIS 👀
The topics:
0:46 -- "You insult me, Danny!"
3:39 -- The Treasury Companies
4:45 -- The Lightning Network
7:22 -- Matt Kratter / Luke Dashjr / Op Return
9:38 -- Jeremy Rubin / CTV / Op Next
11:50 -- The Blocksize War / Communicating in Person
14:32 -- CSW Lawsuits
16:00 -- The Power Vaccum
17:41 -- Crab Buckets (Soft Fork Edition)
18:35 -- Learning the basics?
20:00 -- Quantum
20:50 -- Lying to Ourselves (and everyone else)
21:52 -- Why bother?
23:00 -- NGU /Our contempt, and hatred, of the users who make this all possible.
25:41 -- CSAM etc
26:12 -- Creativity
26:30 -- My recent TabConf Talk/Debate
27:00 -- AI, as a symptom (of the 18 years we wasted)
28:00 -- People have learned / Outro
Backlink to episode 5: xitter.cf/Truthcoin/status/20862…
Episode 5
- The Death of 110
- Will ECX be any different ?!?! (from 110)
- 'Job Selection', sigh
- The ECX Rollout in Stages, with full launch Oct 31
- Emergency Difficulty Adjustment - cure worse than the disease - some oft-overlooked facts
- Replay Protection -- our intent, new method, (what will 110 do now?)
- How much hashrate
- MEV - Do I still think it is fake? Yes.
What *really* happened, at Theranos?
Out of everyone on Earth, Mr @TylerShultz_ is our best source of reliable information. Below is his take on YCSE: statnews.com/2026/10/19/eliz…
We need Erika's take as well!
xitter.cf/ErikaMCheung/status/21…
We tried to see "You Can See Everything"; it was sold out everywhere in LA. @nathanfielder you owe me nothing, and everything. Be a homie and hook me up with tickets.
Paul Sztorc retweeted
HAPPENING NOW in downtown Chicago, outside the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the historic center of onion futures trading
REMINDER: it's the end of this month!
Halloween 🎃
BREAKING: New Bitcoin Fork
I am helping create a **new Bitcoin Hardfork** -- dropping this August, called "eCash".
- Your coins will split. For example, if you have 4.19 BTC, then you will get 4.19 eCash.
- You may sell your eCash -- or keep it. Or ignore it!
Vegas:
- Yes, I will be in Vegas next week.
- No, I won't mention this, on stage -- (that would be rude).
Our L1 Node...
- is a near-copy of Bitcoin Core.
- is Sha256d mined.
- forks via a one-time difficulty-reset -- to its minimum value. (So, mining will be crazy at first.)
- Yes, we will change the seed nodes, the name, the network magic, etc.
Codewise, the L1 will remain compatible with Bitcoin Core:
- We will continue to merge their changes (even the bad ones).
- The L1 will activate Bip300/301 via CUSF -- the core untouched soft fork. So, no lines of code will be changed, on the L1.
- The activation client will be published periodically (link below).
- We will do several bug bounty contests this summer.
- The client will be frozen 30 days prior to the fork.
Yes, there will be Drivechains:
- We have 7 in developement right now.
- Users can also submit their own.
- Drivechain is a vision of "competing L2s" -- this avoids the "dev capture" problem.
- These L2s are all Merged Mined. Miners automatically get free $.
- Our L2s are already capable of planetary scale, and onboarding 8 billion users.
- We also have a zCash-like L2, with strong privacy.
- Other L2s: Truthcoin (Prediction Markets), CoinShift (Decentralized Exchange), BitAssets (NFT etc), BitNames (Identity), Photon (Quantum Resistant).
Unlike BCH (the 2017 fork):
- There is no "Bitcoin" in the name. New name, new brand.
- You are getting advanced warning (4 months).
- We are replaying all txns (at first). We will release a coin-splitter tool.
- This is a permanent & sustainable fix to Bitcoin's problems (instead of a 1 MB to 8 MB temporary fix).
- Back in 2017, the BTC tech stack was strong, and expectations for Lightning were strong. Today, it is the reverse.
Video to follow.
Wishful thinking is a hell of a drug
I’m not trying to be an elitist about You Can See Everything, and I don’t claim to fully, without a doubt, have the “correct and accurate” conclusion.
But oh my god some of these hot takes prove that Billy and Holmes will ABSOLUTELY get Theranos 2 off the ground without any issue. And some of these people will probably invest in it!
Paul Sztorc retweeted
FOUNDER & CEO OF LAYERTWO LABS PAUL SZTORC TO SPEAK AT BITCOIN AMSTERDAM 2026 🇳🇱
📍 SugarFactory, Amsterdam
🗓️ November 5–6, 2026
Its like a child saying: "what if we just gave everyone free money?" Like - the question you asked your parents when you were five years old.
It should not come from the mouth of an MIT educated CEO of a publicly traded company
Baffling, and arguably fraud



















