On November 15, 2025, at block height 923347, the eCash network officially activated Avalanche Pre-Consensus, delivering instant transaction finality and real-time settlement on a Proof-of-Work blockchain for the first time. This upgrade marks a significant milestone for eCash and brings its vision of fast, secure, and user-friendly digital cash closer to reality.
The launch follows an earlier announcement at the Electronic Cash Conference in Barcelona last month, where eCash founder Amaury Séchet revealed the much-anticipated arrival of Pre-Consensus and noted that mainnet activation was programmed to coincide with the November 15 network upgrade.
Pre-Consensus enables the network to finalize transactions in under 3 seconds, giving users and businesses a payment experience that feels immediate while preserving the decentralization and resilience of Nakamoto consensus. With this launch, eCash now offers one of the fastest and most secure settlement layers in the cryptocurrency industry.
This achievement follows the first phase of Avalanche integration, Avalanche Post-Consensus, which went live on September 14, 2022. Post-Consensus strengthened network security by protecting against 51 percent attacks and enabled reliable one-block finality for XEC transactions. Pre-Consensus extends Avalanche into a real-time consensus engine that transforms how value moves on eCash.
Instant Settlement for the Digital Economy
Avalanche Pre-Consensus introduces a high-speed coordination layer that enables nodes to agree on transaction validity before they are included in a block, cutting confirmation time from 10 minutes to just a few seconds. That’s over 100X faster than PoW-only cryptos like Bitcoin (BTC). This means transaction settlement no longer depends on block intervals or confirmation counts. Payments are final the moment they are broadcast.
“Pre-Consensus is a milestone not just for eCash, but for digital cash technology in general.” – Amaury Séchet, eCash Founder
Instant finality addresses the core limitation of traditional financial systems, where slow settlement forces reliance on intermediaries for trust and liquidity. Even most cryptocurrencies inherit this delay. By finalizing transactions within seconds, eCash removes that barrier entirely and enables direct, risk-free value transfer between participants. For the first time in history, we have a system that has strong sound-money properties, while also being convenient and scalable in direct use. This is truly a civilization-changing level breakthrough.
This breakthrough unlocks new categories of applications. Microtransactions become viable, real-time automation becomes reliable, and machine-to-machine commerce, in-game asset transfers, streaming payments, and instant financial operations all become possible at the base layer. With Pre-Consensus live, value can move across the eCash network at the speed of information.
A Foundation for the Future of Digital Cash
With instant settlement now active on mainnet, eCash enters a new stage of capability. Real-time finality improves user trust, simplifies exchange and business integrations, and sets the foundation for future features such as permissionless subnets and seamless cross-chain interaction.
Most importantly, it brings the network closer to its core mission: delivering global-scale peer-to-peer electronic cash that is fast, reliable, and secure.
For users, Pre-Consensus eliminates the wait for block confirmations when depositing to major eCash exchanges like Binance, Upbit, Bithumb, HTX, or CoinEx. Transactions are finalized within three seconds, allowing platforms to credit deposits immediately. A growing list of services already supporting Avalanche finality for eCash can be found at https://scorecard.cash/.
eCash’s Nakamoto and Avalanche hybrid creates one of the most robust and performant consensus models in blockchain, positioning the network as a highly secure, lightning-fast, and extensible Layer 1 designed to deliver electronic cash at planetary scale. Instant finality is part of a broader vision of internet-native money. More on the significance of this milestone can be found at https://e.cash/blog/instant-finality.
Avalanche on eCash is an independent implementation by the Bitcoin ABC development team and is distinct from the AVAX blockchain. Details on how Avalanche enhances the performance and capabilities of eCash are available at https://e.cash/blog/avalanche.
The upgrade was celebrated throughout the community, with team members joining Nate’s Pre-Consensus livestream and community members participating in the special Pre-Consensus Launch Poker Tournament featuring a 5 million XEC prize pool. These celebrations captured a shared excitement around a milestone that sets the foundation for eCash to become the settlement layer of choice for the internet economy.
