I. The origin of XEC
We know that Bitcoin’s current block size stands at 1 MB, which is a decision made by Bitcoin’s founder Satoshi Nakamoto in light of the hardware conditions and network security issues at the time. However, as Bitcoin becomes a mainstream asset over time, and as the number of Bitcoin holders and traders goes up, 1 MB blocks can no longer meet the current demand. Therefore, upgrading Bitcoin’s architecture and scaling the network has now become an urgent task, and it was under such circumstances that Bitcoin forks appeared.
At 20:20 on August 1, 2017, Bitcoin went through a hard fork when BCH was officially split from the Bitcoin blockchain and started to run independently at block 478,558, which marks the birth of Bitcoin Cash (BCH). This new cryptocurrency supports large blocks (the block size expanded to 8 MB). Since then, the emerging BCH has completely parted ways with the original Bitcoin blockchain.
The forked BCH is developed and maintained by multiple teams, including BitcoinABC, Bitcoin Unlimited, Bitprim, Nchain, Bitcrust, ElectrumX, Parity, and Bitcoin XT, which also foreshadowed the subsequent forks.
On November 15, 2020, BCH went through its 7th hard fork, and here is what sparked the conflict in the community: BCH ABC (BCH’s main developer team) insisted on introducing the Infrastructure Financing Plan (IFP) in the November upgrade, primarily to solve the funding issue facing them. The team requested that 8% of the BCH block reward should be allocated to IFP as the key development fund for BCH.
Although the plan was intended to promote the long-term growth of BCH, it hurt the core interests of BCH miners and was opposed by community members soon after it was released. Eventually, most miners went with BCH Node (BCHN), which does not include the IFP. At this point, the BCH community was divided into two camps: the core development team BCH ABC and BCHN.
To seek further growth, BCH ABC built a professional team of promotion and operation to gain more market influence. On July 1, 2021, BCH ABC officially launched eCash, a new brand with a clearer positioning, and its native token is called XEC. The tokens were distributed at the 1 BCHA=1,000,000 XEC ratio, which marks the birth of eCash.
II. Advantages
eCash uses the Avalanche consensus, a revolutionary consensus algorithm that enables instant transactions, enhanced security, and fork-free upgrades. In addition, Avalanche is also EVM-compatible, which means that Ethereum developers can migrate or extend their DApps to the eCash network.
Apart from that, eCash allows anyone to create and trade their own tokens, as long as they specify the name, supply, decimal places, and icon of the token.
III. XEC’s potential
According to the roadmap released by the eCash team, eCash will achieve its goal of “becoming a sound money that is usable by everyone in the world” in terms of scale, usability, and scalability, which correspond to three major categories of improvements respectively:
1) Scaling transaction throughput (from about 100 transactions per second to more than 5 million transactions per second);
2) Improving the payment experience. Making transactions instant and reliable is the baseline. All transactions should be completed within 3 seconds, safe and sound;
3) Extending the protocol & conducting fork-free future upgrades to support the future economy.
To achieve such ambitious goals, the eCash network will be upgraded twice a year on May 15 and November 15. At the moment, upgrades such as the mixing protocol and Avalanche Post-Consensus are under planning.
IV. How to mine XEC
Like BTC mining, XEC mining is also a hashing process where miners engage in massive computations with mining machines. That said, as the network hashrate has kept rising, mining with a single machine is no longer cost-effective, making mining pools the first choice of most miners.
Pools that support XEC mining include ViaBTC, Mining-Dutch, etc. Here, we will illustrate how you can mine XEC in ViaBTC Pool.
1. The algorithm used by XEC is SHA256d, the same as that of BTC. As such, you can mine XEC with BTC mining machines, such as Antminer S19 Pro, Whatsminer M30S, and Innosilicon T4+;
2. Select a payment method for XEC mining in ViaBTC Pool (e.g. PPS+, PPLNS);
3. Set up the mining address; there are three addresses available to miners in ViaBTC Pool (if miners fail to get connected to one address, they will be automatically switched to another):
- stratum+tcp://mining.viabtc.io:3014
- stratum+tcp://mining.viabtc.io:314
4. Set up the miner name and password (e.g. account name: viabtc, miner name: viabtc.001, password: skip or enter any password);
5. After the connection is established, wait for 10–15 minutes of stable operation, and then log in to the ViaBTC website to check the status and yield of the mining machine;
6. Finally, withdraw your mining profits. ViaBTC allows miners to make four types of withdrawals: Auto Withdraw, Normal Transfer, Inter-user Transfer, and Transfer to CoinEx. In particular, apart from Normal Transfer, all other withdrawals require zero fees.
In today’s bearish crypto market, mining and hoarding coins is a sensible investment strategy. So why not start with mining XEC?
