I finally did something I probably should have done a long time ago: I checked out eCash’s competition. I should have probably done this ages ago, but like they say, better late than never.
Before I go on, a few major caveats. All I tested was how easy it was to make a transaction. This wasn’t about smart contract functionality, size of the community, network effect, or the protocol design or roadmap. Also, I only tried the handful of projects I was curious about and ignored those that I wasn’t interested in or already familiar with. I also admit that it’s possible I chose a bad day to use these networks or a less than ideal wallet since all I did was a quick search to find wallets that supported the specific coins, downloaded them, then procured just enough of each to try and make a few transactions.
Now without further ado, here are the results. (Apologies for the sloppy videos. Didn’t think to use screen record until it was too late.)
eCash (XEC)
Transaction Fee: $0.00002
Transaction Time: Instant
Comments: I decided to use the Cashtab browser extension since I normally use the web wallet, but the experience was just as fast and flawless. To me XEC is the bar that all other coins must try and beat.
Ethereum (ETH)
Transaction Fee: $0.54
Transaction Time: 16 seconds
Comments: Aside from the high transaction fee and the long wait for the transaction to appear, I also found it frustrating that the fee kept changing before I hit send. This means that if you try the send max option, sometimes the fee jumps up and you’re not able to send the transaction at all. Maybe ETH is great for running smart contracts, but it’s definitely not ready to be ultrasound money.
(Since Ethereum supporters are always touting various layer 2 solutions, I thought I should test those as well. So I decided to try Arbitum, Optimism, and Polygon. I don’t know if it would have been cheaper to buy each token on an exchange to test these networks, but I decided I’d try to convert the ETH in my Metamask by using a bridge. As someone who is unfamiliar with the Ethereum ecosystem, I was a little wary using random websites to connect to my Metamask, but since I didn’t have much money in there I figured it would be fine. In each case the whole bridging experience was hugely disappointing. First, I had to connect my wallet to a 3rd party website, then I had to wait about 20-30 minutes before I got my funds. The fees were also quite expensive as they were typically around $2 each time I bridged. In any case, once I got my layer 2 tokens, I went ahead and tried to make a transaction.)
Arbitrum
Transaction Fee: $0.04
Transaction Time: 7 seconds
Comments: Using Arbitum was indeed much cheaper and faster, but that’s only if you don’t count the cost of bridging. I don’t know how comfortable I’d be sending a bunch of my ETH to a 3rd party website to convert to a layer 2 token. Maybe there’s some trustless way to do it, but either way, 7 seconds is way too slow if you want to be usable as money.
Optimism (OP)
Transaction Fee: $0.04
Transaction Time: 7 seconds
Comments: Basically the exact same experience as Arbitum. Not sure there’s any difference between them.
Polygon (MATIC)
Transaction Fee: $0.002
Transaction Time: 18 seconds
Comments: First of all, converting my ETH to MATIC was a nightmare. The bridge I used didn’t work for some reason and my tokens never appeared in my metamask wallet. So I had no choice but to buy some MATIC on an exchange and withdraw. While the transaction itself was cheap with sub-cent fees, it took longer than an Ethereum mainnet transaction. Also, you can see in the video that I was confused because when the MATIC appeared in my second wallet, it showed up as ETH and I had to refresh the browser in order to fix it. The Metamask team could do a little more work on ironing out these kinds of bugs. A horrible experience overall.
Solana (SOL)
Transaction Fee: $0.001
Transaction Time: 33 seconds
Comments: Fee was nice and cheap but 33 seconds for a transaction is an eternity.
Avalanche (AVAX) C-chain
Transaction Fee: $0.001
Transaction Time: 18 seconds
Comments: Fee was cheap but the transaction was still way too slow, though it was much faster when using AVAX’s X-chain as shown below.
Avalanche (AVAX) X-chain
Transaction Fee: $0.001
Transaction Time: 4 seconds
Comments: Again the fee was cheap and the transaction was much faster using the X-chain versus their C-chain. My only complaint is with the Core wallet itself, which to me was a bit clunky to use and not as easy to set up as something like Cashtab.
Dash (DASH)
Transaction Fee: $0.003
Transaction Time: Instant
Comments: Other than eCash, this was the only other cryptocurrency that was lightning fast. I used the Dash wallet listed on their site along with Edge wallet. It wasn’t a horrible experience but I still think setting up a Cashtab wallet is much easier than having to download an app to use a coin.
Zcash (ZEC)
The last project I tested was Zcash. Unfortunately, I had a lot of issues even trying to send a transaction so I don’t have a video to share. Apparently their network has been under a spam attack since June of last year causing problems with syncing. I actually sent two transactions from their Zecwalletlite to my Edge wallet but they never came through.
Conclusion
I can honestly say that among the coins I tried, I didn’t find any that was better at being electronic cash than eCash. I also tried out different wallets during the process including Metamask, Trust Wallet, Via Wallet, Edge, Phantom, and others, but none combined simplicity and functionality as well as Cashtab did. I know many people were hoping Bitcoin ABC would release their wallet as an app, but this test made me decide their web wallet approach is far superior. No need to download anything and the overall onboarding process is so much easier and faster. By comparison, I generally found the wallet apps to be buggy and slow.
With that said, eCash still has a long way to go in terms of network effects and community building. Each of the other projects I tested can be used in more places and appear to be listed on more exchanges. But rather than see this as a detriment, I see it as an opportunity because it means eCash still has plenty of room to grow in the coming years.
All in all, this little experiment demonstrated to me that I’ve chosen well in supporting the eCash project and that the team has put a lot of thought into their design decisions. Knowing all the improvements that are coming soon as well as the other future roadmap items, I’m convinced eCash just might be the most underrated cryptocurrency in the entire industry.
If you’re interested in learning more about XEC, visit e.cash.