David Lee Chaum is an American computer scientist and cryptographer, a pioneer in fundamental ideas for digital privacy and cryptocurrency. His contributions include:
Anonymous digital money: In the 1980s, Chaum developed concepts for anonymous electronic money, allowing transactions without revealing the identity of the parties involved.
Blind signatures: A cryptographic technique invented by Chaum that allows a signer to approve a document without seeing its content. This technique is crucial for the functioning of anonymous digital money.
Mix networks: Chaum proposed systems to anonymize online communication by routing messages through multiple servers (mixes) that shuffle and encrypt the data, making it difficult to trace the origin and destination.
Secure electronic voting: Chaum also developed systems for electronic voting that ensure the privacy of the vote and the integrity of the process.
eCash is a cryptocurrency project that seeks to realize David Chaum's ideas of anonymous digital money. Its history is linked to Bitcoin Cash ABC (BCHA):
Bitcoin Cash ABC (BCHA) emerged as a fork of Bitcoin Cash (BCH).
In November 2020, Bitcoin Cash ABC underwent a controversial hard fork.
Subsequently, in July 2021, Bitcoin Cash ABC underwent rebranding and became eCash (XEC). This name and branding change aimed to distance the project from previous controversies and emphasize its focus on becoming a usable digital currency for daily payments, following Chaum's original vision of electronic money.
eCash implemented the Avalanche protocol, seeking to improve scalability and transaction speed.
The ticker XEC represents the basic unit of eCash, with one million "satoshis" of Bitcoin Cash ABC equaling 1 XEC. This resulted in a total supply of 21 trillion coins.
The eCash project aims to stand out as a cryptocurrency focused on payments, with low fees and high speed, seeking to achieve mass adoption as a medium of exchange.
In summary, David Lee Chaum is a pioneer whose ideas on digital privacy and anonymous electronic money have been seminal. eCash is a cryptocurrency that, after a history of forks and rebranding, positions itself as an attempt to realize this vision, focusing on fast and low-cost payments.