eCash

What Is eCash (XEC)? eCash (XEC) is a Layer-1 digital cash network, developed by Bitcoin ABC. 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 establishing a minority fork that was given the interim name and ticker Bitcoin Cash ABC (BCHA) until the official brand on July 1, 2021, came out. The network is since 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. Generally speaking, the Bitcoin ABC engineers are specialized in scaling, which reflects in the unique technological development of the eCash blockchain, that has made it its mission from very early on to scale Bitcoin-technology to planetary scale. 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. Related Pages: Check out Ripple (XRP) — a payment-oriented cryptocurrency Check out Stellar (XLM) — another cryptocurrency focused on payments Get the latest crypto news and latest trading insights via the CoinMarketCap blog How Many eCash (XEC) Coins Are There in Circulation? As a Bitcoin fork, eCash (XEC) follows many of the same rules already established for Bitcoin (BTC). The ledger history goes back to 2009, which means the coin is already 95% distributed, with no token unlocks, vesting schemes, or founder allotment. 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. 1 Coin = 1 million bits. The reason for this is simply that it is easier for users to handle 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, eCash added an optional Avalanche protocol, leveraging the benefits of both technologies 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's 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…