ECash (XEC), formerly known as Bitcoin Cash ABC (BCHA), is a fork of Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). The rebrand from BCHA to XEC occurred in July 2021, and eCash has continually looked to distinguish itself from its predecessors. A key change XEC stressed was a change in the denomination of its currency. Although the tokenomics reflect the same supply and total decimal points as BTC and BCH, XEC removed the decimals to make its supply easier to understand.
The base units of eCash are called “bits” and replace the tedious decimal places of other cryptocurrencies. Instead of sending 0.00001 BTC, you send 10 bits with eCash. This makes things a lot more accessible for people entering from a traditional background. The transition to base units might appear small but it was a big part of the rebranding as the flushing team believed the removal of decimals would greatly impact adoption.
“No other money has eight decimal places. Why should crypto?” – Amaury Sechet
Upon the rebranding, eCash announced it would convert all BCHA coins to XEC at a ratio of one to one million.
The three main objectives of the cryptocurrency are;
- Scaling transaction throughput
- Reducing time to finality
- Allow for upgrades without the need for forking
What Makes eCash Unique?
eCash (XEC) is designed with the intention of offering Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatibility and being interoperable with the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector on Ethereum (ETH). EVM compatability is a huge step in the right direction toward making XEC more widely adopted.
Some key objectives targeted by eCash
- Allow for anonymous transactions
- Ensure the authenticity of transactions
- Keep transaction costs affordable to nil
- Offer fast finality times for real-world usage
Who are the Founders of eCash?
ECash is currently led by Amaury Sechet- a software engineer at Facebook, former lead developer of Bitcoin Cash, and the man who forked that blockchain to establish the BCHA blockchain (the predecessor of eCash).
What are the Tokenomics of XEC?
Like many of the other Bitcoin clones and forks out there, eCash shares many of the same tokenomics as Bitcoin.
ECash has the same supply cap as Bitcoin: 2.1 quadrillion satoshis. However, instead of those 2.1 quadrillion satoshis being divided by 100 million to end up with 21 million BTC, they were divided by 100, leaving a total supply of 21 Trillion.
As a note, XEC is not an ERC-20 token. It is its own blockchain, similar to Bitcoin (BTC). However, ECash is looking to be EVM-compatible, meaning compatible with the Ethereum network.
How Is the eCash Network Secured?
The developers of eCash plan to add proof of stake (PoS) to speed up transactions and make the blockchain more scalable. This would help with transaction throughout, and time-to-finality. The aforementioned Avalanche consensus would mean fork-free upgrades are also possible. The Avalanche layer is set to be added on top of the existing PoW in order to leverage the benefits of both.
