Bitcourier:

Who is the person doing the interview on your side?

Zach:

Hi, my name is Zacharia Hildreth, I am from California, USA, and I am the CTO and Founder of X-Cash.

Bitcourier:

What is your academic and professional background?

Zach:

I have been building software for over 20 years: since High school.

I set up and ran a company before going to college (Regis University) to get a B.Sc in computer science from 2013 to 2016.

I’ve been researching and contributing towards blockchain technology since 2014. I wrote X-Cash’s Hybrid transactions technical paper, and co-wrote X-Cash’s DPoPS technical paper.

Bitcourier:

Which programming languages do you use?

Zach:

The languages I know are; X86-X64 Assembly, Angular, bash, Bootstrap framework, C, C#, C++, CSS, GO, HTML, JavaScript, jQuery, Node.js, PHP, Python, Typescript, and Unity VR Games. I plan to learn Vue and Rust next.

Bitcourier:

What is an interesting fact about you?

Zach:

Interesting fact about me:

Before going to college, I created a VR baseball sim and had it tested by my friend who is now a Major League Baseball player.

Bitcourier:

What inspired the creation of X-Cash?

Zach:

We believe in removing barriers and connecting people, instantly, and at low-cost.
In this day and age, there should be no entry requirements or maintenance fees for businesses and individuals to possess powerful wealth management tools, nor should these tools be burdened by technical bureaucracy, or inflated transaction costs for users.We aim for Security, Stability and Flexibility, to be a better alternative to most of the other chains.

Bitcourier:

What problem are you trying to solve?

Zach:

We initially identified a weakness affecting all of the big crypto projects that will certainly act as a great filter for actual adoption in the near future: most if not all blockchain networks can't handle the intense usage of 10s of thousands of transactions per second which will come from mainstream usage and remain secure, or even remain online.

Many blockchains advertise 1M (million) TPS (transactions per second) but they don’t advertise that even if Bitcoin: which has one of the lowest TX sizes: could handle 1M TPS, the hard drive or network bandwidth requirements would exceed most modern computers capabilities if they chose to run a Bitcoin node.The high hardware dependencies will create instabilities from attempting to keep up with the data load, which ultimately means that network crashes are likely.

Bitcourier:

Hasn’t this problem already been solved?

Zach:

Yes and no. Chains have employed layer 2s to handle transactions off of their respective main chains thus splitting the load onto smaller chains, but the problem we see is that the methods used currently are inherently vulnerable, as checks on security are often flouted for convenience and deployment speed, thus leading to widespread centralization of 2nd layers, which in consequence means that entire 2nd layers can be taken down by attackers, or mismanagement.

Bitcourier:

What is your solution?

Zach:

We have created a system with symmetric security, inherited from the base chain to its layer 2s, that can scale indefinitely using our novel DPoPS algorithm. It is composed of the top 50 elected delegates that will process our ‘high-level features’; instant payments, smart contracts, dAPPS, and NFTs. All nodes process base TXs, but only delegates will process high-level functions. We can do this because of our unique approach to how we handle our decentralized database: we’ve made it dynamically scalable. If the network shows signs of congestion, the delegates will have the incentive to upgrade their servers due to the race to collect fees for processing these high-level features. We don't have any potential for a single point of failure in any component of our network, including our sidechains.

Bitcourier:

What do you bring to DeFI?

Zach:

We are our own iteration of DeFi, and in this space our unique approach ensures to provide a comprehensive disruption by delivering on what the people want; secure, fast, inexpensive, and environmentally-friendly transfers, while delivering our high-level features, and above all, keeping decentralization and censorship-resistance our guiding principles.

Bitcourier:

Who benefits from your platform?

Zach:

Our DPoPS and core code are open-source, so anyone with technical knowledge can benefit from the innovations we’ve made: we look forward to seeing this, as we believe our solution to be a necessary implementation in the coming period.

Bitcourier:

How about specifically for business and investors?

Zach:

For business and investors, we absolutely disrupt commercial and remittance markets by offering low-cost, instant, and safe payments, on a network built with a security first mentality. We give the ability to store wealth offline while being able to monitor stakes accrued by searching for your wallet address in the delegate explorer.

Bitcourier:

For the end user?

Zach:

For the end-user, we offer many incentives for them to become immersed in the world of X-Cash: a metaverse if you will. Whether it's our flex-privacy: hybrid private/public transactions (sent from the same wallet with a toggle button): or our X-Bank custodian service that hosts our cross-chain bridge to Polygon which enables XCASH to trade back and forth to our Polygon token by the same name and use all of Polygon’s features (including DEXs), or our X-Payment service which connects people, and payments across Discord, Telegram, and Twitch, or our on-chain no risk staking that can be done with an offline device, or our high-level Web 3 features (Smart contracts, NFTs, instant send), we offer a set of services that suit all needs.

Bitcourier:

For the crypto space as a whole?

Zach:

For the crypto space, our novel DPoPS protocol is the first for a Cryptonote coin, and allows for DPOS voting + DBFT consensus + VRF random block creation, keeping the chain protected from DDOS and 51% attacks, allowing for 1 confirmation payments, all while utilizing little energy for block creation. And of course, our chain is censorship-resistant, decentralized, immutable, and borderless.

Bitcourier:

What is unique about your protocol in the context of Web3?

Zach:

This is mostly explained above, but once X-Cash 2nd layers are released a user will be able to do the following:

1: Send a public or private transaction from the same wallet, where public transactions still protect your balance and transaction history using RingCT and stealth addresses.

2: Have the option to receive all transactions or elect to only receive private or public transactions.

3: Be able to create custom blockchains on top of our blockchain utilizing our DPoPS consensus mechanism for their blockchain with mining emission and everything (not tokens, but blockchains).

4: Create NFTs.

5: Ability to create smart contracts using native programming languages.

6: Stake coins with delegates by sending reserve proofs and not coins.

7: Be able to vote for consensus changes through delegates.

8: Able to send instant transactions.

9: Do all of the above on an optimal network, as explained above ...

Currently #1, #6, and #9 are already implemented!

Bitcourier:

What is your opinion on the current state of the STO market?

Zach:

When we began, we set out to be different from other projects of the time and decided to put ethics at the forefront by not running an ICO during peak season of ICO-mania.
We did however run a premine when we were in our POW stage, so that we could fund development, and have a team reward. The STO market can be seen as the successor to the ICO market, and we have no current need to participate in this.

Bitcourier:

How is your team reward structured?

Zach:

The team reward gets unlocked in 20% increments once we reach market cap thresholds in powers from 10¹ up to 10⁵ (currently only 20% has been unlocked: 10^{1 =} $10M market cap, 10^{5 =} $1Bn market cap ) instead of an arbitrary time, so that we can promote confidence that we're builders first. We use reserve proofs to show a live audit of the team funds for transparency.

Bitcourier:

Did COVID19 affect your organisation?

Zach:

For some of us, unfortunately yes COVID curfews meant that we were spending less time in the office, though most of us work remotely which some saw as a bonus.

Bitcourier:

Did new opportunities arise from it?

Zach:

We’ve found that more people staying home led to more discovery, and more people applying to become contributors, which is always welcome.

Bitcourier:

Tell us about your plans for the remainder of 2021 and 2022?

Zach:

DPoPS: Release high-level features.
X-Payment: Telegram and Twitch expansions.
X-Bank: Staking
General: wallet upgrades and a new WebAssembly GUI Wallet, increase of marketing efforts, xHUB public release, more exchange listings and onboarding partnerships & contributors in all capacities.

Bitcourier:

To finish, I wonder if you have UK-based projects in your partnerships?

Zach:

At this time we don't have any UK based projects, but we see the UK as a fertile ground for blockchain technology, and we’re actively looking for partnerships with UK-based organisations. Please reach out to us at: [email protected]