On July 1st, we hosted a Twitter Space & AMA for the eCash Day celebration. Below is the recap of the Q&A session in more details.

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1- I know you are solving problems that could never be solved before. Your job is not easy.
Is avalanche ready for production? What is the latest situation? This is the question that everyone is most curious about.

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• Avalanche is close to launch. Out of an abundance of caution, we are waiting to run additional tests before rolling this technology out on mainnet.  Development will continue after launch. There are many more features  to implement, which can be reviewed at avalanche.cash 

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2- What can you tell us about the available funding for eCash? What stage is GNC at?

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• We have received a good number of high quality proposals. Several have been accepted. Right now GNC spending is about in line with revenue. But the GNC has good reserves accumulated from the last few years which are also available should additional proposals attract enough support.
  
  The GNC as an institution is still very new. Substantial improvements have been made to processes and procedure, and more are planned.. The GNC is pretty unique in its structure and it’s an iterative process of getting it to work fluidly. We will keep working on functions for the GNC. The ultimate goal is to add value to eCash in the most efficient way possible.
  
  

3- Do you plan to publish a weekly newsletter?

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• We have started to release regular monthly updates on Twitter in addition to our regular content, now managed by a full time social media manager. If there is enough interest from the community, we can also release an email newsletter.  Our Social Media such as Twitter and Telegram groups are the best ways to stay up to date (You can find all of them on ecash.community). We also have a few blog posts in the pipeline which will come out soon. Our Community Member eCash Informer is planning on creating an unofficial newsletter, when he hits enough subscribers.
  
  

4- Will XEC be listed on new exchanges? Do you have any work on this and similar issues?

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• The eCash team is continually reaching out to new exchanges and partners as part of regular business operations, with new exchange listings in the pipeline. What the community and users can do to improve our chances is to also request the listing of eCash on their favorite exchange. If we signal enough demand, exchanges might feel inclined to prioritize the listing of eCash.

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5- BCHA rebranded as eCash XEC in July 2021. BCH is still there. I think BCH is seriously losing blood. Have you received an offer for BCH to join you?

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• BCH and eCash are totally separate projects and there is no chance or technical way to have them join together.

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• Any developer previously working on BCH is welcome to continue their work on eCash. Since the base technology is similar, we also welcome the BCH projects who are interested to launch on eCash. Especially when it comes to eToken projects (Also known as Simple Ledger Protocol). eCash will continue to support eToken infrastructure and is building out a comprehensive developer toolkit to revamp the many already existing developer tools, many of which are already familiar to bitcoin developers.

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6- We became a family. I follow the eCash team on bitcoinabc.org. Don't you have a group photo? I'm curious about other developer team. I'm curious about your workplace, your working environment.

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• We work remotely in different parts of the world, so we have not yet had every team member in the same place at the same time. Some team members are anonymous, although they can be followed by their work and code. Non-anonymous members are on LinkedIn. 

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7- Are there any features that make the eCash network superior to the Bitcoin network? If so, what are these features?

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• We have a clear and achievable roadmap focused on scalability and usability, which we have been working through Many projects these days see the roadmap as some kind of marketing gimmick. eCash is a mission-driven project that has achieved key milestones and will continue to work through more in the future.

• eCash protocol revenue allows politically independent and sustained development, even in a bear market environment. Development direction on bitcoin and other projects has in the past been influenced by large donors whose interests do not necessarily align with those of the holders. 

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• These days, most crypto analysts consider BTC a “store of value.” eCash is building world money. So, it needs to be a store of value, and also a practical medium of exchange”. Compared to BTC, this takes more development work.

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• eCash supports opt-in privacy with Cashfusion, which is not viable on BTC due to its relatively high transaction fees.
• The addition of Avalanche adds a lot of great features such as instant finality, potential for subchains, and easier upgradability. This feature will also allow eCash to compete with BTC’s dominant security position.

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8- The Luna UST issue damaged the confidence in the market. Markets have turned into a bloodbath. As in the whole world, people faced serious damages. What precautions will the eCash team take against such attackers in the future?

• eCash is a fork of Bitcoin, meaning it’s

1. It’s built on a strong technical foundation that has lasted for 12 years already, and
2. Coins are already fairly distributed through 12 years of proof of work mining.
   
   

• So,eCash is not subject to the same ponzi scheme problems that plagued Luna and other new projects in the cryptospace. These coins get a lot of attention because it looks like a lot of “free” money is being handed out. But usually the supply on such projects is overwhelmingly controlled by the founders, with predictably bad results.

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9- Where do you see eCash XEC in the world of the future? What kind of conveniences will eCash provide in the future? Where do you see yourself in 3 to 10 years?

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• eCash is building censorship resistant money for the world. To get there, we need to be competitive with major world currencies like the USD, and also popular global commodities like gold. Both of these items have known problems that we are trying to solve.
  
  In the case of USD and other fiat currencies, most people rely on a central bank not to inflate their savings away, as well as their neighborhood bank not to gamble their money away.
  
  In the case of gold, it is subject to increasingly complicated legal restrictions.
  
  eCash aims to preserve the features people love about money and gold – wealth, portability, security, privacy – while combating the increasing restrictions placed on these ancient technologies by states and failing banks. 

• For this to happen we need to build world class infrastructure and have an entrepreneurial developer culture building products and services using eCash. We are working to build this at the same time we are working to build the node software.

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10- How much of eCash do exchanges own or what percentage were given to them? Is eCash considering establishing a decentralized exchange in the future? How will they fight the manipulations of centralized exchanges and whales?

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• eCash has a pre-existing distribution and the supply is mined and not controlled by any person or team. So exchanges only own what they earned over the years through user deposits and trades. This is a key distinction for eCash compared to other new cryptocurrencies – eCash supply is not controlled by the team. Exchanges that list eCash were not offered any listing fee or any portion of the supply.
  

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11- I find Amaury's work very valuable for humanity, but what will happen to eCash if he leaves eCash. In many projects, the project collapsed when the Founder left and something bad happened to him. Will eCash be able to move on without him?

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• Startup companies call this “key man risk.” However, eCash is not a company, it is an open source protocol. Amaury is a tremendous technical leader and asset to eCash. A successful cryptocurrency needs both good leadership and political independence. If it cannot succeed without a single person’s participation, then it is already a failed project.
  
  You can look to the success enjoyed by bitcoin after the departure of Satoshi Nakamoto.
  The point of a decentralized protocol like eCash is that it can move on, even without its founder.

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12- Frankly, I think Bitcoin is a scam project even though it was a groundbreaking technology at the beginning. I think that exchanges with constant manipulation are selling non-existent BTCs. There is manipulation in the stock market, but not this much. My heart is in favor of the BTC reset. Even if we reset and reset to a beautiful crypto world, I think that altcoins will take a sigh of relief and get the value they deserve. I'm curious about the Bitcoin ABC team's opinion on this. Does the crypto world need a reset? How will eCash, a BTC fork, be affected if BTC resets?

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• We agree that BTC got off track from the goal of building a global electronic cash system and that is actually how the Bitcoin ABC project came to be, leading us to eCash today. Still, the empirical ‘real world’ testing that occured on BTC is invaluable for future projects like eCash. Proof of work mining is today a tested fair way for coin distribution, unlike other schemes like Luna which have led to wealth destruction. One of the greatest features of cryptocurrency is that transactions cannot be undone. Reversing transactions is what banks and state actors are doing today to create political interference with money – the goal of eCash is to avoid this influence.
  

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13- What is your best guess of when eCash will reach the 5 million txs/sec target? Is there a technical solution, a roadmap? Or will you conclude with a trial and error method?

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• We have a technical roadmap that will create a system that is able to handle those levels of usage. It’s important that we pace major technical changes prudently in line with blockspace demand and available resources.
  
  So, it’s not trial and error. It’s constantly iterating and making sure that the technology is always comfortably ahead of scaling demands. We think BTC made a major mistake by allowing transaction demand to sprint past its supported software scale.
  
  It’s not just a developer problem though. For now, the technology is far ahead of real world demand for crypto transactions in commerce. Entrepreneurs, businesses, and users who are more than traders will all play an important part in reaching world scale.

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14- Do you feel comfortable with the stage reached from July 2021 to this time in terms of writing code? Has technology advanced?

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• Software can always be better. Software also does not exist in isolation – it runs on computers, which are always improving and changing. So there will always be improvements to make.
  
  We have made substantial progress, but at the same time there is still and always will be lots of work to do.
  
  We would love to implement things faster. However, crypto development isn’t the same as something like Snapchat. If we rush something and release a critical bug, the consequences would be worse than someone not seeing a picture or seeing the wrong data on their Facebook profile. So, testing and simulating adversarial environments are an important part of our development process.
  
  We are also looking to expand the team as resources allow us to have more developers contribute to the technology advancement needed at the infrastructure level.
  

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15- What do you hope eCash (and crypto in general) will eventually achieve?

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• Crypto development is a technological arms race for the defense of personal freedom. eCash is the technology of financial freedom.
  
  Today, most people have limited choice when it comes to the money they use. They are vulnerable to local political decisions inflating their savings away or even freezing their funds.
  
  eCash is an open source technology designed to combat these effects. 

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• There are different ways eCash can achieve this goal, whether it is used as world money accepted everywhere or more of a “lifeboat” scenario, where people around the world can use it as a fallback or emergency mechanism in an alternative economy.

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16- Confidence in central money and banks is decreasing in the world. This is what attracts people to crypto. Do you think Bitcoin will grow even more? As Hal Finney said in 2009, bitcoin will reach $10 million. Do you agree that bitcoins have to become very expensive in order to become successful and secure?

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• Bitcoin will probably continue to grow, though at a much slower rate than its early rise when it was the only game in town. Bitcoin is not the most compelling technology on the market, but, as you say, its competitors like central banks are getting even worse.
  
  If bitcoin had scaled to match user demand, then bitcoin becoming very expensive would have indeed made it more successful and more secure. Unfortunately, it’s had the opposite effect. Most bitcoin is held by large whales who do not transact with it, and small transactions – which make up the overwhelming majority of day to day economic activity for most people – are not practical on bitcoin.
  
  Advances in crypto technology like Avalanche allow bitcoin-level security for smaller projects. For eCash, an increase in price and popularity will not have the detrimental impact seen on bitcoin. 

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17- This is a groundbreaking project. Central banks are watching you by putting them on their radar. Do you feel any political pressure on you?

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• Satoshi had the right ideas about this. It’s important to compete, but that doesn’t mean running around and trying to start fights. The more technology you develop under the radar, the greater your future impact will be.
  
  We always have to be prudent just by the nature of the project. Competition with central banks is inevitable - it means you are succeeding.
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18- Are we in the bear season now, how long do you think this will last?

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• The eCash team has been through a few bear markets. It looks like we are in another one. Typically, things trade sideways until the next halvening. eCash has the same halvening schedule as bitcoin. We are using this time to continue building out next-generation crypto tech to be production ready well before the next up cycle.
  
  Of course, it’s impossible to really predict these things. No one would be upset if rising crypto prices came early.

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19- How many projects are there that integrate the avalanche consensus that eCash is trying to achieve into their own network?

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• The only one that we know of is AVAX, which was engineered for its exclusive use after efforts to include the mechanism on BCH didn’t pan out.
  
  eCash's Avalanche Consensus code is totally separate from Avax and being built completely independently by the Bitcoin ABC team. So, eCash will be the first project to include Avalanche on a proof of work system (ironically, this was the initial intention when the Avalanche whitepaper came out). This means eCash has decentralized bootstrapping which enables eCash Nodes to trustlessly enter the Avalanche quorum based on the security of Nakamoto Consensus. It also means we retain the proven security and supply distribution system of bitcoin.

• eCash is unique in combining Avalanche Consensus with Nakamoto Consensus to maximize the advantages of each one and mitigate their weak points.
  

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20- Is eCash used in metaverse technology to buy something in the virtual world?

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• We’re not currently aware of a project that has integrated eCash in this way, but the eCash technology is ready for this kind of integration. Someone looking to build out this kind of system could apply to the GNC to get started.

• Going forward we are hoping to have many entrepreneurs build all kinds of projects on eCash. Any projects that add value to the eCash ecosystem should apply for GNC funding.

21- How did @deadalnix and @AntonyZegers first meet? Based on my observations I feel like that meeting could go down as a pivotal moment in eCash history.

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• [Antony answer]: Amaury and I met in 2016 in San Francisco at a small Bitcoin conference organized by Bitcoin Unlimited (BU) (https://medium.com/@peter_r/satoshis-vision-bitcoin-development-scaling-conference-dfb56e17c2d9). After meeting him, I recognized his talent and vision for how to scale Bitcoin, and started trying to convince BU to accept his help, then helped him launch Bitcoin Cash, run Bitcoin ABC, and eventually launch eCash.

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22- Really looking forward to Avalanche on eCash. I would love to know more about where the future staking will be. I'd love a big XEC staking pool that we connect our cashtab to. For our safety in case the exchange freezes accounts!

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• Staking rewards haven’t been implemented yet but it is planned. The details are yet to be worked out. Staking isn’t just for the purpose of locking up coins. It is also important for stakers to run a validating node that participates actively in Avalanche Consensus. At the beginning staking is likely to be more something for technical users with a Bitcoin ABC node. In the future pools may emerge, similar to mining pools.

23- All cryptos talk about decentralization, but we see that this is not actually the case.  Headlines like "Here's our CEO".  But how does eCash call itself in this regard?

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• The number one way you can tell that eCash is not like these projects is because it inherited bitcoin’s supply distribution without making any changes or allowances for the team. This is rare in crypto, especially in the last bull market which was dominated by “token” projects distributing all kinds of tokens to founders and investors. eCash avoided this trap.
  
  The eCash protocol as a Bitcoin Fork is very decentralized. The Avalanche implementation is also built to be completely decentralized without a central point of trust. Bitcoin ABC is the project that is devoted to working on eCash and receives funding directly from the protocol without any corporate backers, which makes it very independent with incentives aligned to eCash’s success.
  
  

24- Do you have any ideas about advertising? How will you announce eCash to the whole world? When I can see the shops around the world having a sign saying "we accept #ecash"?

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• Merchant adoption is a powerful idea. We’ve seen campaigns that try to get stores to accept crypto in a top-down manner have limited success. For example, BCH has taken this as its dominant strategy, and the results have been disastrous. 
• eCash aims for a “bottom-up” grassroots approach to merchant adoption. You have to build money that is compelling enough for people to want to use it. Then stores follow.
• We are hoping to do more advertising in the future. It’s important to be good stewards of eCash protocol revenue, spending it on the best available impact. Some marketing is necessary, but it’s important to avoid vanity projects or spending money just to say you did something (especially when you can’t even measure the result). The best marketing is when you have a passionate community. People can also apply for funding for that.
  
  
  

25- When will eCash be able to be natively stored on ledger wallets?

• We are in direct contact with Ledger and other wallet providers to implement native eCash support. It is not in our hands how and when wallet services chose to enable support. The good part about eCash is that as a Bitcoin fork it is fairly easy for providers to implement it by simply reusing the same Bitcoin code with small changes in endpoints. In the meantime, we have produced a guide for using Ledger hardware wallet using a workaround of the BCH support: https://www.bitcoinabc.org/2022-02-03-hardware-wallet-workarounds/ 

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26- You guys keep working to get the time of transaction faster??

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• Yes. Transactions from wallet to wallet are already near instant for 0-confirmation suitable for low-value transfers. With the Avalanche Pre-Consensus update, transactions will become securely finalized almost instantly. Right now many exchanges rely on confirmations of about 10 and up, but with the Avalanche Post-Consensus update exchanges can finalize the transaction after just 1 Block. Later on we will also enable instant-finalization of transactions within seconds. Meaning exchanges can securely credit your deposits after seconds.
  
  

27- Why do you think avalanche is better than other governance coins? What makes it different? And are you planning on making a stable coin too?

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• Our Avalanche Consensus implementation is not related to AVAX. We implement the consensus protocol on top of our Nakamoto Consensus (Proof of Work), there is no integration with AVAX or any governance coin.
• Avalanche is a very new invention and very efficient. Nodes can coordinate and come to a finalized consensus very quickly, contrary to how Nakamoto confirmations work, which are slow. Its drawback is that it is not entirely trustless, but that is where eCash’s Nakamoto Consensus kicks in. The benefits of combining both makes it so powerful and balances out the drawbacks of both consensus mechanisms. 
• For stable coins, the best solution would likely be to encourage USDC or another reputable large stable coin to launch on eToken. Tether did this in the past on the same eToken protocol used by eCash, so we are already technically ready for this step.

28- What is the estimated time for the project to be fully operational?

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• eCash is already ‘fully operational,’ in the sense that its technical capacity is much greater than current transaction throughput. Avalanche will enhance user experience still further. 
• Software can always be improved. Decades from now, the computers running eCash will be different, and eCash development will make improvements to best take advantage of advancing technology.
• It’s frustrating that crypto roadmaps can’t be more exact. This is common across the industry. Even with ETH’s major ETH 2.0 upgrade, in the pipeline for years, there has never been an exact date. As new issues and problems are discovered, work is undertaken to solve them. The same thing happens in other human endeavors like construction. Even things that are more routine and easier to plan, like airline travel, often miss the mark.
• You can see the constant dev progress on eCash at https://reviews.bitcoinabc.org/feed/
   
  

29- Why don't you support the Arabic language?

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• If you have a suggestion or request for localization of our website or services, please reach out to us via twitter (https://twitter.com/eCashOfficial) or to our Community Managers over Telegram (https://t.me/ecash_official) and we will make sure to add your language and reference currencies as soon as possible. We are also starting a translation campaign and welcoming anyone in the community who is interested to join and help with translating against compensation and rewards. More on that soon…

30- My Question is related to CashFusion, how will it work? What will be the practical application in the real world? 

• Cashfusion is already working in the real world. You can run Cashfusion using the Electrum wallet. In practice, you send coins to the wallet. The wallet then conducts a number of “fusion” transactions to obfuscate the past transaction history of those coins. So any transactions you make with them in the future are much harder to link with your identity.

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31- Where can I list my eCash token for the exchanges?

• There are no eToken exchanges yet. The GNC has approved the creation of a Decentralized eToken exchange (DEX) created by Chris Troutner from the Permissionless Software Foundation (https://twitter.com/christroutner). 

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32- Can you ensure the eCash ecosystem will exist and grow?

• Yes. Our funding mechanism provides resources to maintain our infrastructure and for ecosystem expansion. We think twice about what we want to implement, but when we do, we are committed to it and make sure that it will be well produced and maintained. Be it the continuation of the eToken protocol (former SLP) or the implementation of Electrum ABC wallet software or Cashfusion and many more.

33- One of my questions is: how to understand the relationship between etoken and XEC? eToken is created according to the ideas of individuals or organizations, so the xec project party wants to see what kind of eToken is created. (This is also to answer the question of how supporters should support the XEC project.) And whether there will be some financial or technical support for high-quality and potential etoken projects in the future. 

• The eToken protocol is a decentralized protocol. Through its permissionless nature there are no direct ways to disallow or regulate activities by any authority and it was designed to be that way. Services and users facilitating the eToken protocol have to come up with their own risk mitigation and filtering. We are confident that there are ways and practices on different levels to safely navigate the eToken protocol, without a central authority as a censoring body.

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