eCash (XEC) was established by Amaury Séchet, the former lead developer of the Bitcoin ABC node software team and the founder of Bitcoin Cash (BCH). The Bitcoin ABC team diverged from the BCH blockchain, forming a minority fork initially given the temporary name and ticker Bitcoin Cash ABC (BCHA) until the official branding as eCash (XEC) on July 1, 2021. Following the separation from BCH, the eCash team continues its development as outlined in the scaling roadmap from 2017. Before his engagement in the cryptocurrency field, Séchet was a leading developer at Snazzy D Compiler and a software engineer at Facebook, where he worked on database scaling and researched and developed digital cash solutions. The Bitcoin ABC engineers, including Séchet, are particularly skilled in scaling, a specialization that is evident in the technological advancements of the eCash blockchain. Since its inception, the mission of eCash has been to scale Bitcoin technology to a planetary level. For further details, you can find information on Eulerpool.

The eCash (XEC) network uniquely integrates the Avalanche protocol with its foundational Nakamoto consensus, distinguishing itself from traditional PoW/PoS Masternode solutions. Unlike Nakamoto’s typical 10-minute block times, Avalanche reaches consensus within 2 seconds, allowing nodes to communicate in real-time and make more granular decisions. This integration retains the trustless and decentralized nature of Bitcoin’s PoW consensus while enhancing flexibility, security, and speed through the Avalanche protocol. A further benefit of eCash’s Avalanche integration is its permissionless subnet capability. These subnets, which can implement arbitrary protocol changes, remain anchored to the main chain. The development team plans to create an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) subnet to facilitate interoperability with the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector, as well as a Zero-Knowledge (ZK) subnet for added privacy. The network also offers eTokens, a colored-coins implementation based on the Simple Ledger Protocol. This allows for straightforward and cost-effective management of fungible tokens and NFTs. Tokens can be issued and traded directly within the Cashtab reference wallet. The ability to process gas-less transactions, as exemplified by Pay2Stay’s CRD token, is particularly advantageous for stablecoins and other applications where transaction fees can be paid in the token itself, rather than the native coin. For the project to be successful, eCash’s developers are focused on fulfilling five core missions: * Ensuring anonymous transactions * Maintaining the immutability of transactions * Guaranteeing transaction costs remain nearly negligible * Securing global transactions with finality in less than three seconds * Designing the coin’s infrastructure as a public good, supported by its social contract To achieve these objectives, eCash developers have outlined an ambitious roadmap, which includes: * Canonical transaction ordering for scalable block processing * Incorporating Schnorr Signatures for batched signature validation * Enhancing block propagation using graphene or similar technologies * UTXO commitment with blockchain pruning and faster initial sync * Implementing a Merklix-Meta Tree for scalable block processing * Using adaptive block sizes to accommodate market-driven growth up to 1TB blocks These ambitious solutions aim to scale eCash to handle 50 transactions per user per day for up to 10 billion users.

As a fork of Bitcoin, eCash (XEC) adheres to many of the principles already established for Bitcoin (BTC). The ledger's history dates back to 2009, indicating that the coin is already 95% distributed, with no token unlocks, vesting schemes, or founder allotment involved. It mirrors Bitcoin’s supply and distribution model, which means that every 210,000 blocks, approximately every four years, the miner rewards are halved. eCash possesses the same supply cap as Bitcoin at 2.1 quadrillion satoshis. However, instead of dividing those 2.1 quadrillion satoshis by 100 million to yield 21 million BTC, it was divided by 100, resulting in 21 trillion XEC. One coin equals 1 million bits. This decision was made to facilitate user accessibility by simplifying the handling of integers, aligning with the coin’s objective of achieving mass adoption.

Instead of solely depending on a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism, eCash has incorporated an optional Avalanche protocol, which combines the advantages of both technologies in a hybrid format. The Avalanche component uses stake-proofs for Sybil resistance and can be regarded as a form of proof-of-stake (PoS). Nonetheless, it differs from conventional PoS protocols because it is not employed for creating blocks or verifying transactions. Instead, it is used for additional polling to thwart 51% attacks on transactions and blocks that have already been validated by eCash’s PoW consensus. The current integration is referred to as “Avalanche Post-Consensus,” which securely finalizes each block and enhances coordination between nodes. This enables unique capabilities such as real-time difficulty adjustment. The forthcoming “Avalanche Pre-Consensus” upgrade represents the second and final phase of the integration, facilitating transaction finality in under 2 seconds. This allows for almost instantaneous settlement of payments or deposits, irrespective of block confirmations, as transactions finalized by Avalanche cannot be double-spent. eCash (XEC) is neither an ERC-20 token nor associated with the Avalanche Blockchain (AVAX); it operates as an independent blockchain similar to Bitcoin (BTC).

On September 14, 2022, the eCash network undertook an upgrade to incorporate the finalization of blocks using Avalanche Post-Consensus. This significant enhancement enables nodes to achieve consensus on the current, active status of blocks visible within the eCash network. Essentially, it allows nodes to confirm that the blocks they observe are also recognized by the rest of the network. This facilitates the secure finalization of transactions after a single block. Most exchanges supporting eCash have since integrated this feature, reducing deposit times to a mere one confirmation. This additional consensus layer is optional, meaning that nodes can connect to the network using only Proof of Work (PoW) if they choose. The second stage of the Avalanche integration, Pre-Consensus, is in advanced development. This forthcoming feature will employ the same mechanism for individual transactions, finalizing them within two seconds, independent of block confirmations. On November 15, 2023, Staking Rewards were introduced on the eCash platform, marking it as the first Bitcoin implementation to incorporate staking rewards. Avalanche's more detailed consensus mechanism allows the network to consolidate decisions beyond the protocol layer, enabling miner policies to enforce rules such as payout rules for staking rewards dynamically, without participants losing consensus. This process is permissionless, permitting anyone who meets 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 launched, eliminating the need for third-party indexing software, thereby streamlining development and providing reliable indexing capabilities for developers and service providers. Chronik signifies Bitcoin ABC's commitment to developing and maintaining a dependable baseline infrastructure that can be used at scale. It also supports the eToken protocol natively, simplifying the process for service providers to support eCash's token protocol. Following the Chronik integration, the eCash network introduced an enhanced version of the Simple Ledger Protocol (SLP), a colored coins feature, under the umbrella name of eTokens. NFTs and fungible eTokens can be created directly in the Cashtab reference wallet. Various businesses, including the eLempira stablecoin (eLPS) in Morazán, Honduras, utilize functionalities such as XEC airdrops to token holders and gas-less token transactions. On October 1, 2024, the Agora marketplace was launched. Agora is an atomic swap protocol based on Script, facilitating non-custodial exchanges between XEC and eTokens, highlighting eCash's inherent DeFi capabilities. The protocol underpins the recently launched eToken DEX on the Cashtab reference wallet. This DEX enables users to list their NFTs and eTokens for sale in an automated, decentralized, and permissionless fashion, conducting trades directly on-chain. On November 15, 2024, the Heartbeat upgrade was introduced, adding an additional real-time difficulty adjustment algorithm (DAA) to complement the primary DAA. This enhancement addresses the issue of irregular block times encountered by Proof-of-Work (PoW) networks. By mitigating disruptive switch mining behaviors, block production times are stabilized, ensuring faster and more predictable transaction processing for all users of the network. This DAA leverages eCash's Avalanche integration to provide a solution to a longstanding challenge for Bitcoin in general, and particularly for minority-hashrate PoW chains. For further details, please visit Eulerpool.

eCash (XEC) is available for purchase through Binance, HTX, CoinEx, Gate.io, and Upbit. Additionally, it can be directly purchased on Guardarian using USD. A comprehensive list of services supporting eCash can be found on scorecard.cash and buyecash.com. For more detailed information regarding eCash, you can refer to Eulerpool.