Behind the paywall you can listen to me talk about some of the issues I have with the eCash project as well as some of the reasons why I still continue to believe in it. I’ve also included a transcript of the entire thing for those who would prefer to read it instead, or translate it into your own native language. (14 minutes 42 seconds)

Hello everyone, welcome to the eighth episode of Cain’s Crypto Commute.

I’m afraid today’s episode might potentially annoy some people, but I’m hoping it doesn’t annoy anyone too much.

So I recently published a blog post titled “Holding eCash to a Higher Standard”. I said I was a bit disappointed, and frustrated, with certain aspects of the project. If you want to know the truth, for a couple of days I was actually feeling pretty down, like to the point of questioning whether or not I still really believed in the project. And then once I decided I did still believe in eCash, I wasn’t sure what to do next. I could say nothing, but I knew I would feel like I was being dishonest, or disingenuous. But I also felt like I wasn’t in a position to say anything, since I don’t have the ability to fix these problems myself.

I even talked to my wife about it, who told me I was just being impatient, and of course she threw in that she’s noticed I’ve been acting impatient a lot these days. I knew she was right, of course, but I felt like I had to get all this off my chest or it would just continue bothering me, so I wrote what I wrote.

In that same blog post, I also wrote about how I’m not here to blindly cheer on the eCash project. What I was trying to get at is that I support eCash because I believe in it and its chances of success. And despite what some may think, I don’t worship the people leading the project. I don’t see eCash as some cult, but as a tech project, a grand experiment built on open source software that has the potential to change the world for the better.

In my opinion, I see eCash as one of the most important projects in the world that is trying to solve one of the most impactful problems in the world. The problem of money.

Most people probably have no idea what’s wrong with our money, nor can they imagine a better form of money, but that’s exactly what the eCash project is trying to build. A form of money that’s orders of magnitude better than the fiat currencies we use today, money for the internet age that can change civilization as we know it.

Now before I continue, let me say that what I’m going to say comes from a place of love, not hate. If I didn’t genuinely love this project, I wouldn’t bother criticizing it, let alone spend all this time talking about it.

Also, I know that critics are not generally seen in the best light, and I thought I’d share a few quotes that point this out:

  1. “It is not the critic who counts… The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena…” – Theodore Roosevelt
  2. “Pay no attention to what the critics say… Remember, a statue has never been set up in honor of a critic.” – Jean Sibelius
  3. And here’s one by Benjamin Franklin: “Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain—and most fools do.”

Obviously I don’t want to be seen as a fool, or someone who everyone decides isn’t worth paying attention to, so it only makes sense to ask myself what’s the point of criticizing at all?

Here’s one potential answer from Winston Churchill who said, “Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.”

Now I’m not saying the eCash project is in an unhealthy state, but I do want to call attention to some things with the hope that it can improve the overall health of the project.

The fact is, up until recently it was hard to really know what kind of state the eCash ecosystem was in since there were hardly any applications that allowed you to use eCash. But now we suddenly have apps like blitzchips.com and the paybutton plugin for WordPress sites, and we get to finally use our eCash for real economic activity. It allows us to put eCash to the test, to see if everything is working as intended, and I have to say, I’ve been a bit disappointed by the performance.

Using eCash has revealed various bugs and shortcomings that just weren’t apparent before. But I don’t think it’s helpful to anyone if I were to just sit here listing every little issue, some of which, I admit, may only be an issue to me. Also, anytime I encounter an issue I let the team know, so I know they’re already looking into these things and hopefully they’ll find a fix soon.

I also know bugs are unavoidable in software. At work I use Microsoft Teams and Outlook every day. These products were shipped by a multi-trillion dollar company with thousands, if not tens of thousands of engineers working on them, and it’s not like they’re bug free either.

So what I thought I would do rather than just listing the bugs I’ve encountered, is highlight just a few that either matter to me the most, or haven’t been addressed in a long time, followed by me highlighting the things that I think are going really well with the project, and are the reasons why I still believe in it.

So the first issue I want to talk about is PayButton, which I’ve been using PayButton on my blog for almost two years now, and the new WordPress plugin version for about six months. Let me start by saying that I’m really thankful that PayButton exists. It is what has allowed me to do something I’ve dreamed since I first got into crypto, which is to have my own little corner of the internet where I’m able to charge people for my content entirely on crypto rails. No KYC, no payment processors, no trusted third parties. This wouldn’t be possible without eCash and PayButton. You may think I’m exaggerating, but see for yourself, there’s no other platform that allows you to do what you did to access this podcast episode. You logged in with your private keys, paid XEC to unlock the content, all without giving up any identifying information about yourself like your credit card number or name and address.

Maybe others don’t see it, but I find it amazing, and to me this is what crypto is all about, and this is how the Internet should work and can work. No more separate logins for every service, no more being forced to rely on big companies to secure your data and privacy, a world where your crypto wallet and your private keys are your passport to the world wide web..

Now having said how amazing I think this is, PayButton isn’t perfect. For one thing, I know some users still have trouble logging in or unlocking paywalls, and though it’s a bug that seems to happen rarely, but not rarely enough, unfortunately. I also know it’s been happening since the launch of the plugin, so I would have hoped it would have been fixed by now. And I’m not trying to throw the PayButton team under the bus, but considering how long it’s taken to fix, it’s getting to the point where I wonder if these are bugs that can actually be solved.

Then there’s the issue of speed. I’ve already told this to the Paybutton team, and they tell me they’re working on it, but I’m really hoping they can figure it out. Considering PayButton is hardly used at all today, I can only imagine how much slower it would be if it got heavy usage.

For some, the current speed may seem fine, but I disagree. If we’re going to outcompete other cryptocurrency projects, as well as legacy finance, we can’t be just as good, we have to be 10x better. I remember the first time I experienced real magic internet money, what I was blown away by was the speed. You can experience it when you send a transaction from one Cashtab wallet to another. It’s blazing fast, and in my opinion, that’s how fast Paybutton needs to be, or at least a lot closer to that than what it is now. Having to wait even just a few seconds for the paywall to unlock deprives users of that magical feeling. It’s the difference between the experience being amazing versus just okay.

The last thing I’ll say on this is that I had the idea for this website not just because I wanted a place where I could share my work, but because I wanted a place for people to experience that magical feeling I once experienced. And while the pieces seem to be finally coming together, it’s not quite there yet.

The second concern I wanted to raise was about the GNC and how it hasn’t really evolved. Considering the GNC is for large XEC stakeholders, I think improving it would be worthwhile. For example, I would love to see the addition of a forum where members can freely discuss ideas or make suggestions. Again, I know that the eCash project doesn’t have a ton of people or resources, so this may just be one of those things that has taken a backseat to everything else being worked on, but I want joining the GNC to be something people aspire to. Imagine someone who just spent a quarter of a million dollars to accumulate billions of XEC so they can join the GNC, and when they do, they are met with something that doesn’t live up to their expectations. I think a more impressive GNC website would go a long way in showing its members that someone gives a damn and is on top of it.

The last thing I’m going to bring up is Pre-consensus. My beef isn’t with the work, or even how long it’s taking. I know it’s being worked on, and I’m also confident they’re getting close to finishing it, but my criticism is with the messaging and communication. It’s been at least a year since they touted it as coming soon on the avalanche.cash website, and to me, a year doesn’t mean coming soon.

Again, my opinion, but I think better communication when it comes to development work in general could go a long way in instilling more confidence in the project and help reassure the community that all is well. While I understand working on software is complicated and difficult to predict, I think it would be helpful to see a little more transparency. I know the team is reluctant to give us projected timelines for when things will be finished because of that unpredictability, but I would rather they give us target dates and then later explain why those targets weren’t met rather than no dates at all, or just saying “coming soon” and little else for over a year.

Anyway, that’s my two cents. I’m sorry if I annoyed anyone, or if this comes across as the ramblings of an impatient bagholder. I understand this stuff isn’t easy, but I think improving in these areas would definitely put the project in better shape.

Okay, now what do I think is going well? A lot, actually. For one, I think the project checks all the important boxes. The mission of building cash for the internet is the right one as far as I’m concerned. The roadmap is excellent, and I’ve yet to see a better roadmap in all of crypto. The incentive structure, the self-funding mechanism, and the team currently benefitting from those incentives are all top notch. And of course the protocol itself. The integration of Avalanche and Nakamoto consensus was a brilliant piece of engineering that wasn’t just some cool science experiment but something that elegantly solves real problems faced by layer one blockchains. The launch of staking rewards was another win. It works flawlessly as far as I’m concerned, and as someone who runs multiple staking nodes, I can assure you that I’ve yet to encounter anything that doesn’t look like it’s working properly. Honestly, in my opinion eCash staking rewards are the best kept secret in crypto in terms of being able to earn yield without having to ask for permission or without having much technical expertise.

Then there’s the apps. If you haven’t tried the Cashtab wallet I mentioned earlier, you need to. To me it’s the best wallet in crypto and it isn’t close. While some may say the user interface needs work, I personally think it has a cool cypherpunk feel. It’s hard to describe, but I feel like it helps make crypto more tangible in a way that other wallets don’t.

There’s also the new XECx token that lets you participate in staking rewards without running your own node and the yield bearing FIRMA stablecoin. Both work so well and are very easy to use. Every day at the exact same time, you automatically receive your rewards for the day, and because the eCash network offers such low transaction fees, you can participate with as little as a dollar worth of XEC. Again, I don’t think any other cryptocurrency offers something like this that’s so easy to use while giving you so much control.

The last thing thing I’m going to mention might not be something you may be thinking of, but it’s the new approach being taken with the official X account. First of all, I think having the eCash handle is awesome. It was great work by the team to secure that before anyone else. You may not think it’s a big deal, but to me little details like this matter. I think trying to get more engagement with the official account is definitely a winning move, because getting crypto twitter’s attention might not be easy, but it’s probably the best kind of marketing there is.

There’s way more positive things I could talk about the project, and I’m definitely looking forward to the new website and the upcoming conference, but I think that’s enough for now.

So in conclusion, while I think there are certain aspects of the eCash project that could be improved, there’s plenty that’s going well, and a lot to look forward to.

Anyway, that’s it for this episode, thank you for listening to Cain’s Crypto Commute, until next time…

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