(This article was inspired by Andrew Jardine. Please give him a follow.)
Win-win transactions occur when all parties involved benefit from the said transaction. This is also called a positive-sum game because the value created is greater than initially available. In other words, everyone who participates is left better off.
There are plenty of examples of win-win transactions in the real world. When someone purchases a new MacBook, Apple wins because it profits from the sale, which can be used to fund future product development and business growth. The customer wins because they get a reliable, high-performance laptop that helps them work efficiently, play games, or create content.
This contrasts with transactions involving zero-sum games in which one party gains only at the expense of another, or value is merely redistributed rather than created.
With positive-sum games, you grow the pie. In zero-sum games, you merely divide the existing pie among the participants.
While this may surprise some of you, crypto was always supposed to be positive-sum, not zero-sum. The vision behind cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology wasn’t to create a new kind of casino game that requires you to buy low and sell high but to build a new financial system to improve the world.
Throughout history, humans have relied on win-win transactions to build everything from houses to automobiles to smartphones and everything else that helps make our lives easier and more fulfilling. This increase in the production of goods and services is seen as economic growth, which we could never achieve if we spent all of our time and energy gambling in casinos or memecoin trenches.
So, how is eCash different?