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Making Crypto Future-Proof: An Interview with eCash
Looking for solutions to the scalability and speed issues of crypto transactions, the eCash team offers a unique approach. We spoke with the developers to learn how their technology could change the payments industry.
Key Takeaways
- eCash’s Unique Consensus Mechanism: eCash combines Nakamoto and Avalanche consensus to enable fast transaction finality in under three seconds, offering both speed and security without compromising decentralization.
- Scalability and Security: Designed for mass adoption, eCash enhances privacy, security, and liquidity, addressing scalability issues that other blockchains like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana face.
- Privacy Solutions: eCash prioritizes user privacy with features like CashFusion, a non-custodial CoinJoin protocol, and plans to implement a Zero-Knowledge (ZK) subnet for even stronger privacy protection.
- Adoption and Ecosystem Growth: eCash is focusing on organic adoption by providing robust infrastructure tools, like the Chronik indexer, and has already seen use in other projects like BCH and DOGE.
- Future Roadmap: eCash plans dynamic fees, dynamic block sizes, and integration with the DeFi ecosystem, with the goal of enabling zero-fee transactions and expanding its use in decentralized finance.
Vision: Changing the way people pay – faster, decentralized, and more scalable
Since 2016, eCash (formerly known as Bitcoin ABC) has been working tirelessly to make Bitcoin technology better. What is the mission? To create a decentralized, scalable, and fast payment system. The eCash team's goal is to create a blockchain network that can compete with traditional financial systems. They are focusing on fixing the problems that Bitcoin has with speed and scalability.
The unique combination of Nakamoto consensus and the Avalanche consensus mechanism is what makes eCash work. With this combination, eCash can process transactions with finality in less than three seconds, which is a big step forward for digital cash technology. In fact, it is the first instance of a Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchain achieving such fast transaction finality.
The eCash team says:
"We are optimizing for scale because it is important both from a technological and an economic point of view."
A larger network makes privacy, security, and liquidity better, which means that money can move freely without getting stuck.
It is designed to achieve a scalable blockchain and make eCash something more than just another cryptocurrency. It's designed to handle mass adoption seamlessly, which most of the current chains struggle with.
eCash's Pre-Consensus: A Real Game Changer
So, while many blockchain networks claim to be fast, the eCash team goes above and beyond. Some chains claim they can provide immediate transaction finality but have to give up decentralization or make things more complicated with centralized validators or hybrid models that aren't as secure.
On the contrary, eCash has a real-time consensus mechanism that eliminates special validators. Its nodes, using Avalanche, make fast, collaborative decisions that ensure transactions are completed within three seconds. This basically ensures speed and safety are not conflicting goals for eCash.
The team says that eCash's unique Avalanche/Nakamoto hybrid makes its security model more complete and flexible than Bitcoin's network. According to the team,
"It's a mix of security and flexibility, with the ability to change parameters on the fly without needing hard forks."
This is one of the best things about eCash compared to other blockchains like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, where scalability is often limited by the way the network is built or by centralized validation models.
How eCash stacks up against Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana
Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency, but it has trouble scaling. Bitcoin is naturally slower than newer blockchains because its block size is small and it doesn't like to change things. It is still limited in its throughput, even though people are trying to make it higher with things like the Lightning Network. This is especially true when you compare it to eCash's improved PoW model.
Ethereum, on the other hand, added flexibility and programmability with smart contracts, which made things more complicated. And Ethereum's account-based model makes it hard to scale because it limits parallelization.
Solana has increased throughput, but it does so by adding complexity and centralizing validation and needing powerful hardware, which can make the network weak when it is under a lot of stress.
eCash is a solution to many of the problems that other blockchains have. It combines the ease and security of Bitcoin's PoW with the ability to grow via Avalanche consensus.
"We don't want to be another gold competitor like Bitcoin."
The team says, "eCash is meant to be used as digital cash all over the world." This makes eCash a very good choice for those planning to use the blockchain for day-to-day transactions, since it's highly scalable, low-fee, and very secure. It should be noted that despite focusing on the cash use case, the eCash supply schedule is no different from BTC.
Two important parts of eCash are security and privacy.
Security is not just a feature for eCash; it's a top priority. The integration of the Avalanche consensus makes it highly resistant to 51% attacks. Each finalized transaction is backed by a security guarantee of over $4 million at the current price of eCash. In simple terms, this provides a level of security comparable to the protection accumulated after approximately 11 blocks on Bitcoin. This guarantee will continue to grow as more Avalanche-enabled staking nodes are added and/or the valuation of XEC increases.
eCash is also committed to giving users control over their financial privacy. Though it is still a transparent blockchain, one of the privacy solutions that eCash offers its users is CashFusion. CashFusion is a non-custodial CoinJoin protocol that conceals funds, hence providing much privacy for the user, maintaining fungibility. It has also inspired the tech behind Wasabi-wallet’s Wabisabi protocol.
The team further explained that the ability for eCash to scale is crucial for improving privacy. Since the network is capable of handling many users at once and large volumes of transactions without excessively increasing fees, users can run multiple rounds with CashFusion, which raises the anonymity set and privacy protection.
From the start, a Zero-Knowledge (ZK) subnet has been an important part of eCash's roadmap:
While it is currently in the ideation phase, the completion of this milestone would provide optional bulletproof privacy protection for users, enhancing the overall security and confidentiality of transactions within the network. This development will ensure that eCash continues to meet the needs of its community.
The Path to Widespread Use
Adoption is often the hardest part of a cryptocurrency's journey. eCash, on the other hand, is not in a rush to compel the widespread use of the cryptocurrency too quickly. They want to prepare the network for scale in the most non-disruptive way possible before greater use kicks in.
The eCash ecosystem is still new, but the team has already seen other projects use its infrastructure. For instance, other projects in BCH and DOGE are already using the Chronik indexer. This shows that eCash can help developers and business owners in the wider crypto ecosystem by giving them powerful tools and libraries to build with.
"We want the right people to see eCash—tech-savvy business owners and developers who see the potential of our network."
As the team says, in due time, products that need much flexibility, reliability, and performance will make their way to eCash organically. Natural adoption is all about laying a strong base first, rather than just trying to get a lot of eyes on it.
However, the team is also proud of the MUSD stablecoin, which became the first USD stablecoin issued by a public entity — the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. Pacific territory — and deployed on the eCash network. This alone highlights the reliability of eCash and its unique tech stack that enables pioneers like Marianas Rai Corp. to build safe and scalable financial products.
What will happen next with eCash?
Looking ahead, eCash has an exciting roadmap. For example, the recently released Pre-Consensus upgrade will power features to come like dynamic fees and dynamic block sizes. These upgrades allow the network to change its block size and fee dynamically according to demand, without needing to coordinate hard forks. Such upgrades are only enabled by the underlying Avalanche Pre-Consensus technology that makes the network much more flexible. Dynamic fees also open the door for zero-fee transactions.
eCash plans to be connected to the wider DeFi ecosystem in the future through the implementation of an EVM-subnet. This means you could swap tokens between eCash and other DeFi platforms, bringing in new users and developers who are already into decentralized finance.
The eCash team has a solid plan, and one thing is unmistakable: they do not want their network to be yet another altcoin. They want it to be a strong, scalable, and extensible solution that anyone in the world can use.
Conclusion: eCash is the way of the future for crypto payments.
eCash is a full payment system that brings together the best features of decentralization, security, extensibility, and scalability. eCash is in a good position to solve the problems that today's blockchain networks are having because it has cutting-edge technology like the Avalanche/Nakamoto hybrid and the Chronik Indexer.
eCash is building the infrastructure and tools to make the system sustainable, scalable, and secure. Even though it may take some time before more people use it, it has unique features and capabilities that are essential for a cryptocurrency to be competitive. eCash is a future-proof solution that balances innovation with reliability for anyone who wants to build on cryptocurrency for everyday transactions and beyond at planetary scale.
