Up to now I’ve made an effort to use cash to not broadcast my every movement to my bank. But as I see cash being phased out around my area I become more motivated to make an effort to contribute to the adoption of crypto, because that’s a potential solution.

What are some good projects in the space that strive to replace cash? I don’t care about the smart contracts, escrow, nfts, etc. I would like to have something that I can conveniently use for day-to-day transactions just like cash in the utopia in which this cryptocurrency is widely adopted. Whether the ‘value’ of that coin will go up or down is irrelvant, but I do care about the existence of a community working towards its adoption in real-case scenarios, and for the project to be actively developed.

Any recommendations of projects I might want to look at?

    • Salamander@mander.xyzOP
      1·
      1 year ago

      Thanks! My experience with both of these was that transactions would take time and would cost money. A friend showed me Bitcoin’s Lighting Network and that was an improvement. But being built as a layer on top of the original network is too complicated for my simple mind, and I think that there was a fee associated with the transfer too. I am looking for a project that uses a minimalistic approach without the bulk. It doesn’t have to be widely available.

      Maybe things have improved with Bitcoin and Ethereum since I tried them. If a friend pays $10 for a pizza to share and I want to send him $5 right away, is it simple to do this with either Bitcoin or Ethereum? Or will it cost me an additional $2.5?

      Also, if I want to pay for my groceries. Can I pay with either of these quickly and walk away, or would I need to stand by the payment terminal for 10 minutes until the transaction goes through?

      I am thinking about the “ideal world” in which the specific tech is widely adopted. Obviously as it stands today you can’t pay with crypto at the grocery at all.

        • Salamander@mander.xyzOP
          2·
          1 year ago

          Thank you! So far, nano is the one that I find most appealing, and I have tested it in practice and it works very well! A worry I have with it is that it appears like the long-term success of the project depends largely on the few people who run the Nano Foundation. But it aligns well with what I want, and it is much more environmentally friendly than proof-of-work systems, so it is my top choice at the moment. But it has been a few years since I have looked at the coins, and I see that there are over 22,000 now! So if there are other more recent projects similar to nano I’d like to learn about them. Something similar nano but more community-driven, like Monero, would be ideal.

          I haven’t used Dash, so I will get some and test out how it works in practice.

            • Salamander@mander.xyzOP
              2·
              1 year ago

              Thanks! I’ll also keep looking. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like there is… Most of the crypto projects appear to use an incentive structure for hosting network nodes that requires fees, and so you can’t just send crypto around like cash. The incentive structure of the nano network is similar to that of the fediverse - people run nodes because they are interested in the success of the project itself. Unfortunately it seems like this is not a good enough incentive incentive for many. And the fact that at the head of the nano project there is a not-fully-transparent “Nano Foundation” rather than it being a community project makes me hesitant of running a node… It feels like doing work for free for a company. But I think I will set up a node anyway, at least until I find a better alternative.

  • mudamuda@geddit.social
    2·
    1 year ago

    I doubt that current systems can replace cash at scale but for niche usage Monero and Litecoin. Also Grin but it is dead.