Epic Cash For Dummies
What everyone should know about EPIC Cash and Mimblewimble.
To be able to recognize and appreciate the advantages of EPIC Cash at all, you need to understand the idea and functionality of a blockchain. Without basic knowledge of the fundamental blockchain technology, EPIC Cash remains one of thousands of shitcoins, as all cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin itself are often referred to.
Independent digital money system
Bitcoin Core (BTC), the mother of all cryptocurrencies, was created by Satoshi Nakamoto as a digital monetary system that functions independently of states, banks and without having to rely on others. The pure monetary function (medium of exchange, store of value, unit of account) was at the forefront.
Today there are thousands of cryptocurrencies with a wide variety of use cases, which are often just simple copies of known cryptocurrencies with additional gimmicks or just simple “tokens” that are created on an existing blockchain. Ethereum, Polygon, Solana and Avalanche are popular blockchains that are used to create various tokens.
The blockchain, a decentralized database
A blockchain is a digital database that stores transactions in chronological order in blocks, whereby these blocks are secured by cryptographic procedures and linked together in an unchangeable way. Logically, the more data is stored in a blockchain, the larger it becomes, which can lead to problems over time. (more on this here)
Copies of this digital database are stored on many computers distributed in a network around the world and are constantly synchronizing. Computers with the full blockchain, also known as nodes, ensure that all transactions are valid. The more nodes a network has, the more decentralized and secure it is.
Transaction process
A transaction is signed with the private key and sent to the network, where it waits in the so-called mempool (memory pool) for further processing by miners. Miners check whether the transaction is valid, i.e. whether the signature is correct and sufficient funds are available. In a further step, miners select transactions from the mempool, combine them into a block, which is then attached to the blockchain, confirmed by the nodes and accepted. A new cycle for the creation of a new block can begin.
A wide variety of consensus mechanisms are used to decide who within the network may add a new block with new transactions to the blockchain and receive a reward for doing so.
Consensus mechanisms
Without going into all possible types of consensus mechanisms, the two most important are Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS), which exist in very different variations.
With PoW, which Bitcoin uses, so-called miners have to solve computationally intensive mathematical puzzles. The miner who is the first to find the correct solution is allowed to add the block to the blockchain and receives a reward in the form of newly created coins and transaction fees. The nodes in the network check both the correct solution to the mathematical puzzle and whether all transactions in the block are valid.
The biggest disadvantage of PoW is considered to be the high energy consumption, which EPIC Cash elegantly avoids with its unique polyphasic PoW, without sacrificing the advantages, such as a better distribution of coins (more on this here).
With PoS, those involved in the validation process must “stake” a certain number of coins, i.e. they are blocked during the staking process and cannot be spent. The validators who stakes the most coins have the highest probability of being selected to create a new block. All other validators then check the new block to ensure that it is correct.
The advantage of lower energy consumption is countered by the disadvantage of an increasing centralization of the validation process, as those participants who already own and stake the most coins are most likely to create a new block, receive new coins in return and thus gain more and more control over the network over time.
Scalability and the blockchain trilemma
The blockchain trilemma refers to the fact that scalability, decentralization and security cannot be improved at the same time. If scalability, i.e. the number of transactions per time interval, is increased, the growth rate of the blockchain increases at the same time, which leads to a decrease in full nodes and thus the security of the entire network, as fewer and fewer can operate a full node with increasing hardware requirements.
Fungibility
Fungibility refers to the property of being completely interchangeable and equivalent. When it is possible to distinguish and trace individual coins by analyzing the blockchain, fungibility is non-existent. For example, “tainted Bitcoin”, these Bitcoins that were involved in illegal transactions are blacklisted and are rejected by crypto exchanges. Freshly mined Bitcoins (often referred to as “Virgin Bitcoin”) do not have any history, and are traded at a premium because possible involvement in illegal transactions can be ruled out with 100% certainty.
Privacy protection
Fungibility and privacy protection are closely linked and are a fundamental requirement of any currency. It not only protects the privacy of all persons involved in transactions, but also ensures fungibility. Without fungibility, a currency will sooner or later break down.
“Tainted coins are very destructive. If you break fungibility and privacy, you break the currency.” Andreas Antonopoulos, author of “Mastering Bitcoin”
Mimblewimble Protocol
Mimblewimble (MW) is a blockchain protocol that improves privacy and scalability at the same time. Through a novel design where no public addresses are stored on the blockchain, a significant reduction in storage requirements and improvement in scalability is achieved while protecting privacy.
In contrast to other privacy-protecting blockchains, which conceal public wallet addresses and other sensitive data on the blockchain in encrypted form and using a wide variety of obfuscation tactics, Mimblewimble works entirely without wallet addresses. Future decryption of sensitive data using quantum computers is therefore ruled out with MW.
This is made possible by the fact that direct contact between sender and recipient must be established outside the blockchain. To circumvent this disadvantage of direct contact between sender and recipient, EPIC Cash developed the EpicBox relay service, which enables transactions without direct contact between the transaction participants as with any other blockchain.
Another advantage of this direct contact, which runs unnoticed by the user in the background (thanks to the EpicBox), is that transactions cannot be sent to an incorrect or non-existent address by mistake, meaning that coins can never be lost. The recipient must confirm the transaction before the sender can send the confirmed transaction to the blockchain for further processing.
Mimblewimble's unique “Cut Through” technology regularly cleans the blockchain of data that is no longer required, freeing up storage space. The more transactions are carried out on the blockchain, the greater the effect of the cut-through.
Mimblewimble can be described as the most important invention in blockchain technology after Bitcoin itself, as it solves the blockchain trilemma in an amazingly simple way, which affects all other blockchains, but especially private cryptocurrencies, which require additional storage space for a wide variety of obfuscation tactics.
EPIC Cash is Bitcoin’s private and lean twin
EPIC Cash, based on the Mimblewimble protocol, adheres to the DNA of Bitcoin with a maximum coin issue of 21 million. In contrast to BTC itself, however, it offers fungibility and full privacy protection thanks to the MW protocol, which BTC only offers in the form of pseudonymity and therefore in principle not at all. As BTC can no longer be mined with simple hardware, the only practical option today is to purchase Bitcoins via crypto exchanges with KYC if you want to avoid being sold tainted coins (blacklisted coins).
As soon as the name and address are linked to a Bitcoin wallet by the KYC process, every subsequent transaction by the participant can be tracked down to the smallest detail. There is an entire industry called blockchain forensics, that has companies like, Chainalysis, that make millions of dollars analyzing blockchains down to the smallest detail for paying customers. With the EPIC blockchain, it is impossible to analyze the blockchain in this way.
By limiting itself to the pure monetary function in its best possible form without unnecessary gimmicks, EPIC Cash can offer maximum privacy protection with an extremely lightweight blockchain with excellent scalability, which also offers all the prerequisites for optimal decentralization, security and scalability in the future. With the same workload and transaction volume, the EPIC blockchain, for example, would only be a tenth of the size of the BTC blockchain.
In conjunction with the EPIC Cash’s unique polyphasic PoW, there are 3 different mining algorithms that alternate to secure EPIC’s blockchain.
These 3 different mining algorithms run on different hardware, i.e. CPUs, GPUs and ASICs. This creates a broad basis for participation in the mining process even with household computer hardware, which prevents centralization. If necessary, the algorithms can also be exchanged on the fly or additional algorithms can be added in the future.
Outlook
Especially in this day and age, when central banks are arbitrarily expanding the money supply and thus further diluting the value of the currency, the idea of an independent and trustworthy currency is becoming increasingly important to many people. However, what has not yet seeded into the consciousness of the masses is the importance of privacy for a currency.
However, privacy protection is a basic human right and is the cornerstone to a free society. We are headed towards a centralized dictatorship, through the introduction of centrally managed central bank digital currencies, so-called CBDCs. If we accept this form of digital financial surveillance, we become controllable, manipulable and sanctionable at the discretion of those in power.
Overcoming the state's monopoly on money and replacing it with different competing currencies, as should ideally be the case in a free society, need not remain an illusion. Bitcoin is the prototype of a decentralized, scarce currency that is independent of the state. But just like the countless imitations, Bitcoin lacks the most important element of all - privacy protection.
Without privacy, there is no fungibility, and without fungibility, it cannot be a useful medium of exchange or a good store of value. Yet Bitcoin is mistakenly seen as a good store of value, as “digital gold”. But gold, like EPIC Cash, is fungible and especially private... no one knows how much you have. The same can not be said for Bitcoin. Gold and EPIC Cash are therefore better stores of value than Bitcoin.
This is why EPIC Cash was created with its unique features. It offers complete privacy protection, is fungible, highly scalable, scarce and has an extremely small blockchain size, which ensures that full nodes and mining can be operated with standard household computer hardware in the future, guaranteeing decentralization and security of the network.
Summary
EPIC Cash, based on the revolutionary Mimblewimble protocol, represents a paradigm shift in the cryptocurrency landscape. Protecting privacy while improving scalability was previously unthinkable. All privacy-protecting protocols not based on Mimblewimble struggle with bloated blockchains that limit scalability on the one hand and lead to increasing centralization on the other.
EPIC Cash, on the contrary, protects privacy while being highly scalable, fungible and has an extremely small blockchain that allows many participants to run a full node and mine with existing home computers. It is the only cryptocurrency that represents the DNA of Bitcoin better than Bitcoin itself. EPIC Cash achieves Satoshi Nakamoto's goal of creating a Peer-to-Peer electronic cash system that has a fungible and scarce currency, that is independent of any influence, limited to a maximum of 21 million coins and at the same time protects privacy.
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