Webcash
WEB Price
What is webcash?
Webcash is a peer-to-peer (p2p) bearer cryptocurrency with a strong focus on payments, simplicity, and Proof-of-Work mining. Unlike other altcoins, webcash has a radically different architecture: there's no blockchain. Instead, webcash wallets check for double-spending by querying the webcash server. It's based on the "e-cash" concept which was originally conceived in the 1980s.
This allows for extremely fast payments with no fees. Payments are decentralized, p2p, and instant, based on users copy/pasting their webcash directly to their recipient over any communication system they already use like email, chat, etc.
Anyone can send and receive webcash because webcash is sent p2p. There's no user registration or logins. There are no "addresses". The server only talks to a single user at a time and does not "forward"/send value from one user to another. Users send webcash to each other out-of-band without talking to the webcash server. Wallets talk to the server only to protect against double-spending. The value of webcash is not pegged to any currency.
Status
Webcash was launched fully functional in January, 2022 and has been growing ever since. A fledging community has formed around webcash, creating new software to make webcash easier and delightful to use. I can't say enough positive things about the (community made) WebCasa wallet, and there's a pretty cool open-source C++ optimized miner made by another user.
WebCasa wallet is particularly useful for mobile payments. I've used it to give quick demos at conferences. When you type in an amount of webcash to spend, WebCasa shows a QR code that has a link for the new user's camera to launch into a new WebCasa wallet with the payment already in the wallet. It's a neat demo, and it's very fast.
Mining
Webcash is CPU mined. Anyone can be a miner. As webcash does not use mining for consensus, it's easier to change the mining algorithm if anything negative should happen on the network due to excessive growth. So far CPU mining has been relatively stable, but this might change in the future as interest continues to grow.
I think that user mining was a big draw for users in the beginning of cryptocurrency. There's just something about using your existing laptop or desktop computer and being able to mint coins right there without waiting on equipment to be shipped or registration delays or anything else. It feels like magic.
Miners give the server 5% of mined webcash.
History
Here are some highlights from history to give background to webcash.
David Chaum introduced the concept of electronic cash or "e-cash" in the 1980s.
Early attempts at commercialization were focused on banks and dollar pegging. Each bank would purchase the software and run their own e-cash with their own tokens. Users could spend the token at an online shop but only if that merchant was also a customer of the same bank. Naturally this was not good for adoption and the whole thing never took off.
Ultimately, credit card networks won the fight against Chaumian e-cash for online payments.
Early e-cash attempts were based on actual regulated banks and financial institutions that handled dollars to peg the e-cash. Nobody tried anything else. Nobody tried PoW mining for e-cash. In light of this, it's easy to see why Satoshi was disillusioned with the early attempts at trusted systems. In a sense, bitcoin helped disrupt the thinking around e-cash and what digital money could be. Webcash shows that p2p transactions don't have to go through a trusted server.
Where can you buy Webcash?
WEB tokens are currently unavailable to trade on exchanges listed on CoinGecko. Information will be updated when the token is available on centralized/decentralized exchanges.
When can we expect Webcash (WEB) tokens to launch?
While CoinGecko cannot provide details on the launch of WEB tokens, you can stay updated on WEB's price movements by adding WEB to your watchlist.