If I had to choose the most underrated story in all of crypto right now, it would be the upcoming integration of Avalanche on the eCash (XEC) network.
For starters, the launch of Avalanche will mark the culmination of more than four years of grueling hard work by Bitcoin ABC that has seen them fight their way through three hard forks, one hash war, not to mention more than a few bozos along the way:
But rather than get discouraged or give up, the engineers at Bitcoin ABC focused on finishing the job they started in 2017.
Layering the Avalanche protocol on top of the tried and true Proof of Work (PoW) foundation XEC is built on is something that’s never been done before. Achieving this milestone has required countless man-hours and lines of open source code to be written to make it possible. Once completed, this code will enable eCash nodes to communicate with each other in a way that Bitcoin nodes have never been able to before.
The implementation of Avalanche post-consensus will also make the eCash network virtually impossible to 51% attack. Once a transaction has been confirmed in a block, it can’t be reversed no matter how much hash power an attacker has. In theory, this will mean that XEC will have greater security than Bitcoin (BTC) or Bitcoin Cash (BCH) despite being a minority chain with less dedicated mining power.
In practical terms, this benefits users because instead of having to wait for 12 or more confirmations when depositing to an exchange, 1 confirmation will suffice.
Activation of Avalanche post-consensus will also lead to the introduction of staking rewards to eCash, a first for any Bitcoin fork. In my opinion this represents a huge leap forward because it will finally allow holders to help contribute to the network by staking their coins and earn a reward for doing so. Holders like myself will now have an incentive to run our own nodes and increase the amount of decentralization of the network.
With the addition of Proof of Stake (PoS), there will finally be a version of Bitcoin that aligns the incentives of miners, holders, and developers by using the block reward to reward all participants who contribute to the XEC ecosystem.
In addition, because running a staking node requires significantly less energy than a mining node, this hybrid approach combining both PoW and PoS will result in the eCash network being much better for the environment compared to networks that solely rely on the former like BTC or BCH.
After Avalanche post-consensus goes live, work will then begin on Avalanche pre-consensus. Pre-consensus is similar in concept to post-consensus but it applies to transactions instead of blocks. While post-consensus makes it impossible to reverse a found block, pre-consensus will make it impossible to reverse a found transaction.
This will mean transactions can reach finality within a matter of seconds. No more waiting for blocks to know a transaction is irreversible. Imagine depositing to an exchange and your coins being available to trade immediately without having to wait for a single confirmation. Simply speaking, post-consensus means no more 51% attacks, and pre-consensus means no more double-spend attacks.
And that’s just the beginning. Avalanche will also benefit on chain scaling as well as enable a host of other features like an EVM subnet, a zero-knowledge subnet, variable transaction fees, dynamic block sizes, and much more.
I think this is a game changer for crypto. I hope that the activation of Avalanche on eCash will signal a new era where blockchain projects actually deliver technical solutions rather than focusing solely on marketing and hype.
What Bitcoin ABC has accomplished is unparalleled in this industry. By proving their work over a long enough period of time, they earned the right to get paid for their work directly out of the protocol. Not through coercion but through leadership. Not through a shady pre-sale or pre-mine but by demonstrating their value and offering users a choice to pay for their services or not.
Unsatisfied with the work done by other Bitcoin developer teams, the team at Bitcoin ABC forged their own path. In doing so they didn’t seek to enrich themselves by looking for greater fools, but with the aim of building the future they want to see, a future where our money is controlled by code and consensus instead of by central banks and governments.
If you’re interested in learning more about the progress of implementing the Avalanche protocol onto the eCash network, click here.