While the world appears awash in cryptocurrencies today, there are only a small handful of digital coins that satisfy the fundamental rules of the Bitcoin Standard. 

These rules include:

• Hard-capped supply of 21M coins

• Nakamoto Consensus

• Proof-of-Work

• Longest Chain Rule

• No special nodes

The brilliance of the Bitcoin whitepaper was the recognition that these rules could be used to create a cryptographic store-of-value that was immune to arbitrary inflation, as well as a digital medium-of-exchange that did not require any trusted intermediaries.

Limitations and inefficiencies quickly became apparent within the original design, however, which led to a couple of hard forks, in 2017 and 2018, to increase the block size. With larger blocks, BCH and BSV managed to improve upon the BTC transaction rate. Nonetheless, as hard forks, they share most of Bitcoin's inherent limitations. Among these is a sole reliance upon the SHA-256 hash algorithm for proof-of-work, which more or less guarantees that special purpose ASICs will always have an insurmountable advantage when it comes to mining... and that more or less guarantees that the manufacturers of those special purpose ASICs, such as Bitmain, have a captive market that can be force fed a steady stream of hardware upgrades. Miners must constantly invest in new hardware or get left in the dust.

Environmentalists and eco-conscious citizens have often noted Bitcoin's large appetite for electricity but they often fail to recognize what is arguably a more severe ecological impact: the vast amounts of e-waste generated every year, as special purpose ASICs become obsolete and are replaced with ever-faster hardware. In the Bitcoin mining industry, entire generations of hardware turn over every couple of years. The scrap is generally shipped to third world countries, where the most valuable metals are extracted in the cheapest possible way - usually by incineration - resulting in serious pollution, including toxic fumes and other environmental damage.

Epic Cash (EPIC) is one of only crypto currencies that satisfy the fundamental rules of the Bitcoin Standard, while not being a fork off the Bitcoin blockchain itself. Fair-launched on its own chain in 2019, it is a novel, Rust-based implementation of the Bitcoin Standard that uses the latest cryptographic technologies to overcome the design constraints that bedevil the BTC, BCH and BSV chains:

• Epic Cash uses the Mimblewimble protocol to drastically reduce the size of the blockchain. A full EPIC node will currently fit on 1.2 Gb (vs. 300+ Gb for a full Bitcoin node).

• The Confidential Transactions (CT) and CoinJoin technologies are used to scramble the transaction information contained in a block; unlike with Bitcoin, transaction addresses are not visible on the chain, which protects them from snooping and censorship.

• Rather than being limited to a single algorithm like SHA-256, EPIC employs a range of proof-of-work algorithms that can be switched from one block to the next.

While all of these advantages are significant, the multi-algorithm proof-of-work scheme in particular has a direct and immediate impact on e-waste.

In recent years, algorithm designers have developed alternative proof-of-work schemes that are optimized for particular classes of hardware:

• The RandomX algorithm is optimized for general purpose CPUs, as would be found in off-the-shelf PCs.

• The ProgPoW algorithm can be tailored to favor the graphics cards that are embedded in gaming consoles.

• The CuckAToo31+ algorithm favors low cost, energy-efficient ASICs.

By swapping between these proof-of-work algorithms, the EPIC protocol is able to distribute mining rewards across a broad range of users. This has many advantages, but among them is the fact that no special-purpose mining equipment is required. Instead, equipment that was purchased for other applications can be used to mine EPIC part-time, when the device is on break from its day job. If the current block being mined is using an unfavorable proof-of-work algorithm, a device can simply go into standby and wait its turn. If devices can profitably mine as a hobby, rather than a full-time job, they can live much longer, more productive lives. They need not be forcibly retired after a year or two.

The EPIC protocol is currently set to use RandomX for 60% of the blocks that are mined, use ProgPoW for 38% and use CuckAToo31+ for the final 2%... but new and improved algorithms can easily be added to the mix in the future. In fact, algorithms under development now will give the mining edge to geographic pools of smartphones. This has enormous implications for the unbanked citizens of developing economies.

A blockchain requires energy and there is no getting around that... but energy that provides a valuable service is energy well spent. Providing a secure store of value that is easily exchanged with others is an extremely valuable service. Conservation and efficiency are always going to pay dividends to a rational economic actor but preserving wealth comes first, and this is not just a concern for the wealthy - it is a primary concern for everyone on the planet, regardless of income level. 

Decentralization is one of the core principles of the EPIC community. Decentralization of mining activity harkens back to Nakamoto's original vision for the blockchain. This has a host of advantages, in distributing mining rewards more equitably among users, with the happy side effect of breaking the grip that the manufacturers of specialized hardware currently have on the mining community and slowing the flow of printed circuit boards into the landfills of the world.