What Is eCash (XEC)?

eCash (XEC) is a Layer-1 digital cash network, developed by Bitcoin ABC, the founders of Bitcoin Cash (BCH). It was created on Nov 15th, 2020, and has since distinguished itself from its predecessors and other Bitcoin clients by integrating the breakthrough Avalanche consensus with its core proof-of-work (PoW) layer, extending its fundamental capabilities.

The development roadmap is set with three main goals:

Scaling transaction throughput from ~100 transactions per second to more than 5.000.000 transactions per second
Improving the payment experience with a near-instant transaction finality time
Extending the protocol and establishing fork-free upgrades, allowing for more rapid, iterative development

Who Are the Founders of eCash?

eCash (XEC) was founded by Amaury Séchet, who was the lead developer of the Bitcoin ABC node software team, and the founder of Bitcoin Cash (BCH). The Bitcoin ABC team split from the BCH blockchain to establish a minority fork with the interim name and ticker Bitcoin Cash ABC (BCHA). Since the rebrand on July 1, 2021, the network is known as eCash (XEC). Despite splitting away from BCH, the eCash team continues developments as outlined in the scaling roadmap in 2017.

Séchet was a lead developer at the Snazzy D Compiler and a software engineer at Facebook before his involvement in cryptocurrencies, where he was working on database scaling and also on research and development of digital cash solutions.

What Makes eCash Unique?

The eCash (XEC) network is the only network that has integrated the Avalanche protocol with its core Nakamoto consensus, which also differentiates itself from the usual PoW/PoS Masternode solutions. Avalanche can come to consensus within 2 seconds as opposed to Nakamoto’s characteristic 10-minute block times, enabling nodes to communicate in real-time to make decisions in a more granular fashion. The network retains the trustless and decentralized nature of Bitcoin’s PoW consensus while gaining more flexibility, security, and speed through the Avalanche protocol.

Another advantage of eCash’s Avalanche integration is its permissionless subnet capability. Subnets with arbitrary protocol changes can be created while staying pegged to the main chain. The development team plans to create an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-subnet to be interoperable with the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector as well as a Zero-Knowledge (ZK)-subnet for an additional layer of privacy.

The network also provides eTokens, a colored-coins implementation based on the Simple Ledger Protocol. This eToken protocol allows for a simple and cost-efficient handling of fungible tokens and NFTs. Tokens can be created and traded directly within the Cashtab reference wallet. The capability to handle gas-less transactions as seen with Pay2Stay’s CRD token, makes this particularly useful for stablecoins and other use cases where the user can pay transaction fees in the token itself, rather than the native coin.

For the project to become successful, eCash’s developers intend to fulfill five core missions:

Ensuring anonymous transactions
Ensuring the immutability of transactions
Guaranteeing that transactions remain almost free
Enforcing globally secure transactions with a finality of fewer than three seconds
Designing the coin’s infrastructure as a public good, funded via its social contract

To achieve this, the developers of eCash have laid out an ambitious roadmap, with plans to have:

Canonical transaction ordering to enable scalable block processing
Schnorr Signatures to enable batched signature validation
Faster block propagation through graphene or other
UTXO commitment with blockchain pruning and faster initial sync
Merklix-Meta Tree to enable scalable block processing
Adaptive block sizes to support market-driven growth to 1TB blocks

These highly ambitious solutions would propel eCash to 50 transactions per user per day for up to 10 billion users.

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How Many eCash (XEC) Coins Are There in Circulation?

There is no tokenomics of eCash (XEC) but it follows many of the same rules already established for Bitcoin (BTC). It shares Bitcoin’s supply and distribution model, meaning that every 210,000 blocks, approximately every four years, miner rewards are cut in half. ECash has the same supply cap as Bitcoin of 2.1 quadrillion satoshis, yet instead of those 2.1 quadrillion SATS being divided by 100 million to yield 21 million BTC, it was divided by 100, yielding 21 trillion XEC. The reason for this is simply that it is easier for users to mentally grasp integers and this decision aligns with the coin’s goal of mass adoption.

How Is the eCash Network Secured?

In contrast to solely relying on a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism, the developers of eCash added an optional Avalanche protocol, leveraging the benefits of both in a hybrid interplay. The Avalanche part of the integration uses stake-proofs for Sybil resistance and can be considered proof-of-stake (PoS). However, it is distinct from other PoS protocols in that it’s not used for generating blocks or validating transactions, but rather for additional polling to prevent 51% attacks on transactions and blocks already validated by eCash’s PoW consensus.

The current integration is termed “Avalanche Post-Consensus”, securely finalizing each block and allowing for better coordination between nodes that enable unique features such as real-time difficulty adjustment. The upcoming “Avalanche Pre-Consensus” upgrade will mark the second and last stage of the integration, enabling transaction finality in less than 2 seconds. This allows for near-instant settlement of payments or deposits, regardless of block confirmations, as transactions finalized by Avalanche cannot be double-spent.

eCash (XEC) is not an ERC-20 token and is not related to the Avalanche Blockchain (AVAX), it is its own blockchain similar to Bitcoin (BTC).

What key events have there been for eCash?

On September 14th, 2022, the eCash network upgraded to support the finalization of blocks using Avalanche Post-Consensus. This milestone enables nodes to come to a consensus on the current live status of blocks visible on the eCash network. In essence, it allows nodes to verify that the blocks they see are also accepted by the rest of the network. This allows for the secure finalization of transactions after one block. This feature has since been integrated by most exchanges that support eCash, reducing deposit times to just one confirmation. This additional consensus layer is an optional layer, meaning it is not required to be run by nodes who want to connect to the network using PoW only. The second stage of the Avalanche integration, Pre-Consensus, is in late-stage development. This upcoming feature will apply the same mechanism on individual transactions, finalizing transactions within 2 seconds, irrespective of block confirmations.

On November 15th, 2023, Staking Rewards went live on eCash, making it the only Bitcoin implementation to date to incorporate staking rewards. Avalanche’s more granular consensus mechanism enables the network to converge on decisions outside of the protocol layer, allowing miner policies to enforce decisions like payout rules for staking rewards dynamically, without participants falling out of consensus. The process is permissionless, allowing anyone meeting the minimum staking requirement of 100 million XEC to earn rewards by running a Bitcoin ABC node with Avalanche enabled and a valid stake proof.

On April 4, 2024, the Chronik in-node indexer was published, removing the need for third-party indexing software, streamlining development and providing reliable indexing capabilities for developers and service providers. Chronik marks Bitcoin ABC’s ownership of the development and maintenance of a reliable baseline infrastructure that can be used at scale. It also supports the eToken protocol natively, making it easy for service providers to support eCash’s token protocol.

Shortly after the Chronik integration, the eCash network introduced an improved version of the Simple Ledger Protocol (SLP), which is a colored coins feature, under the umbrella name of eTokens. NFTs and fungible eTokens can be created directly in the Cashtab reference wallet. Functionality like XEC airdrops to token holders and gas-less token transactions are also utilized by various businesses such as the eLempira stablecoin (eLPS) in Morazán, Honduras, among others.

On Oct 1st, 2024, the Agora marketplace was launched. Agora is an atomic swap protocol based on Script and allows non-custodial exchanges between XEC and eTokens, showcasing eCash’s native DeFi capabilities. The protocol powers the recently released eToken DEX on the Cashtab reference wallet. This DEX allows users to list their NFTs and eTokens for sale in an automated, decentralized, and permissionless manner, coordinating the trades directly on-chain.

On November 15th, 2024, the Heartbeat upgrade was introduced, adding an additional real-time difficulty adjustment algorithm (DAA) on top of the main DAA. This feature addresses irregular block times encountered by Proof-of-Work (PoW) networks. By preventing disruptive switch mining behaviors, block production times are smoothed out, which ensures faster and more predictable transaction processing for everyone using the network. This DAA leverages eCash’s Avalanche integration to provide a solution to a long-lasting challenge for Bitcoin in general and especially for minority-hashrate PoW chains.

Where Can You Buy eCash (XEC)?

eCash (XEC) is available for purchase via Binance, HTX, CoinEx, Gate.io and Upbit. It can also directly be purchased on Guardarian for USD. A full list of services supporting eCash can be found on scorecard.cash and buyecash.com.

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