As we witness the successful rollout of staking rewards on the eCash network (on what also happens to be the 3 year anniversary of the eCash fork), I thought it would be a good time to take a look back at all the progress that’s been made thus far.
A lot has happened since the eCash fork was created on November 15, 2020. After forking away from Bitcoin Cash, the engineers of Bitcoin ABC had to start from scratch to build new infrastructure, an entirely new brand, and of course a new community.
None of it was easy. Survival was far from guaranteed. And unlike other projects that have the advantage of starting with millions of dollars in venture capital funding, that was not the case for Bitcoin ABC.
To help illustrate what has been accomplished, I’m going to use a metaphor. Let’s imagine eCash as a city, one that was formed by a small group of people who didn’t like the rules of the city they were living in before, so they embarked on starting a new one with new rules and incentives they believed to be more favorable. This is essentially what happened when the Bitcoin ABC team founded eCash Land with little more than a vision and a roadmap on how to get there.
The first item on their to-do list was to create new wallets, which they did by creating the Cashtab.com web wallet as well as the Electrum ABC desktop wallet. This gave people both an easy and secure way to store their eCash. They also built new block explorers to help keep track of payments and newly mined blocks.
Next on the list was the launch of the new eCash brand and website along with a beautiful new logo and ticker symbol. Just seven months after going their own way, the team announced to the world that eCash Land was here and all were welcome to join.
Keep in mind they did all this while having to defend against malicious attackers who wanted to see Bitcoin ABC’s new city fail. But instead of killing the eCash project, the attackers ended up only hurting themselves.
In addition to building out key pieces of infrastructure and creating their new brand, the team also worked on gaining more listings on exchanges, including the biggest one of all: Binance. Once Binance announced their support of eCash, it quickly propelled XEC to an all time high of $0.00039 in September 2021.
But that marked the end of the bull run as the entire cryptocurrency market began to suffer shortly thereafter. This didn’t phase the eCash team, however, and they continued to focus on building and growing the community. They spent the end of 2021 and much of 2022 in pursuit of combining Avalanche and Nakamoto consensus, resulting in the announcement of Avalanche post-consensus in September 2022. This was a huge milestone as it ensured that the eCash network was no longer susceptible to mining attacks like other minority chains and was the equivalent of adding a force field around eCash Land that made it virtually impossible to take down.
With the addition of Avalanche post-consensus, it meant exchanges could safely accept XEC deposits after only 1 confirmation. The Bitcoin ABC team got busy helping exchanges one-by-one to activate 1 confirmation deposits for XEC. This greatly improved the user experience for people in eCash Land since they no longer had to wait an exorbitant number of blocks before being able to trade their eCash.
All the while, they continued to make improvements to the software like the removal of the chained transaction limit, the creation of the speedy Chronik indexer, and of course the launch of staking rewards.
For people with no technical background like myself, I think it’s hard for us to imagine how difficult it must be to add staking rewards to a Satoshi chain. This isn’t like flipping a switch. The team had to create the new proof editor functionality in the Electrum ABC wallet, as well as new RPCs, along with the algorithm to determine the staking reward winner for each block, not to mention documenting the instructions for folks so they can easily run their own staking nodes. On top of all the technical work, the team also had to carefully consider the economic impact of adding staking rewards and how to put eCash in the best position possible for future success.
I’m not here to argue that eCash is better than this or that blockchain. I don’t claim to be an expert on what other projects are doing. But what I am here to do is offer testimony as a long time resident of eCash Land about all the progress I’ve witnessed over the last 3 years. I have seen significant improvements to every facet of the project from the speed and usability of the wallets and explorers, to the increased security and decentralization of the network.
I remember in the early days, I was afraid of what might happen if eCash Land were to suffer a devastating 51% attack, but now I no longer worry about that at all thanks to the work of Bitcoin ABC. The past three years have not been easy by any means. But as we celebrate the launch of staking rewards on this, the 3 year anniversary of the fork, I hope the people in the eCash community recognize how much has truly been accomplished so far and see it as a sign of what’s still to come.
Finally, I know there are people out there who are disappointed the price of XEC hasn’t mooned. They see other coins moving up in price at a faster pace and regret choosing XEC. And while I would love for the price of eCash to pump as much as the next guy, I’m confident that we’re still in the early innings of this ball game. Based on the talent we have on the team, and the game plan they’ve come up with, I believe it’s only a matter of time before we see the results reflected on the scoreboard.
As I’ve written before, I see eCash as a startup that’s only now getting out of its seed stage. I think of the IFP at 8% as the funding provided by angel investors, or the friends and family round if you will, and the increase to 32% symbolizes the series A. Either way, we’re still early, there’s still lots of progress left to be made, and only you can decide if you want to stick around for what just might be the ride of your life.