What is eCash?

eCash (XEC) is a digital currency that strives to function as electronic cash, facilitating transactions for goods and services. It is a rebranded version of Bitcoin Cash ABC (BCHA), which itself is a fork of Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). The base units of eCash are referred to as "bits", a more user-friendly alternative to the decimal places used in Bitcoin Cash ABC. eCash incorporates a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus layer known as "Avalanche", which is distinct from the Avalanche (AVAX) blockchain. The rebranding of eCash involved a conversion of all BCHA coins to XEC at a ratio of one to one million.

How does eCash work?

eCash operates with a focus on three primary improvements: scaling transaction throughput, enhancing the payment experience by reducing transaction finality time, and extending the protocol for fork-free upgrades. It aims to scale from 100 transactions per second to over five million transactions per second. eCash also seeks to support Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility and interoperability with the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector on Ethereum (ETH). The developers of eCash have outlined a roadmap to achieve these goals, including features like canonical transaction ordering, Schnorr Signatures, faster block propagation, UTXO commitment, Merklix-Meta Tree, and adaptive block sizes.

What are the potential use cases for eCash?

eCash strives to fulfill five core missions to ensure its success and usability. These include enabling anonymous transactions, ensuring the immutability of transactions, maintaining low-cost transactions, enforcing transactions with a finality of fewer than three seconds, and designing the coin's infrastructure as a public good, funded via its social contract. These features could make eCash a viable option for a wide range of transactions, from everyday purchases to large-scale business operations. The coin's developers also aim to make eCash interoperable with the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector on Ethereum (ETH), potentially expanding its use cases even further.

What is the history of eCash?

eCash, developed by Amaury Sechet, is a rebranded version of Bitcoin Cash ABC (BCHA), which was a fork of Bitcoin Cash (BCH). The fork occurred on November 15, 2020, and the rebranding took place on July 1, 2021. Sechet, who was also a developer of Bitcoin Cash, initiated the rebranding to establish a different identity for eCash. He believed that reducing the decimal places would facilitate the coin's use. Prior to his involvement in cryptocurrencies, Sechet was a software engineer and a lead developer at Stupid D Compiler.