We are pleased to announce that hard fork was completed with a huge success, and the process went according to plan. It started on Wednesday, July 18th — block height 109073, and was completed on Friday, July 20th. During the hard fork, our development team released security protocols as well as other essential changes such as new wallet, stake pool release, etc.

There were a couple of reasons that influenced the decision to implement a new version of the blockchain. As the development team explained:

”The old EXCC blockchain codebase, as a fork of the Zcash and indirectly Bitcoin, was quite challenging to maintain. Developing a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange based on the old EXCC would have been a problem. The new EXCC blockchain is truly decentralised (both from the technical and economic perspective), and it is very fair to all users. We took the decision with the consideration that the EXCC coin should be fully secured. A new blockchain with Proof of Work consensus is prone to 51% of the known threats and attacks. Thanks to the recently added second layer — the Proof of Stake consensus protocol, we are protected against potential attacks.”
Going forward, with a new blockchain, we can accelerate the work on the new decentralised exchange.

What happened exactly?

During the hard fork we followed a couple of necessary steps:

• On Monday: we announced the hard fork, did the final tests to check the production network, wallet, and stakepool.
• On Tuesday: we made sure everything was ready to take the snapshot from the old blockchain. Exchanges stopped accepting deposits and withdrawals of the EXCC coin.
• On Wednesday: we did a snapshot. After that, we deployed the production network and released stake pool.
• On Thursday: we did staking tests and released the Exilibrium wallet on Github (the official launch — Friday). We verified that everything works well after the entire operation.
• On Friday: we successfully completed the hard fork!
  Now we are waiting for the exchanges to restore the deposit and withdrawal functions. We are also publishing wallet and tutorials to make it easy for you to transfer your coins.

The new EXCC blockchain is awesome… but why?

There are some hard facts that back-up this statement. When we decided to implement a new version of the blockchain, it was a chance to improve our coin. We decided to use this opportunity to introduce new features and make it exceptional.

So this is what we did:

• First, we used an advanced algorithm — Equihash, and as the only PoS + PoW blockchain on the market, it is resistant to ASICs, which makes mining much more affordable on your hardware;
• As mentioned earlier, we used the hybrid Proof of Work and Proof of Stake consensus for increased security and resistance to 51% of potential attacks.;
• Regarding mining — we resigned from the Developer’s tax on block rewards, and made the coin profitable to mine on CPU as it is botnet resistant;
• And we can’t skip the staking aspect- from now on users can stake EXCC coins;
• The web wallet at Xchange.me should be re-enabled tomorrow.
  This is only the first step in the development of the most advanced decentralised coin exchange.

Revealing coin details

We keep receiving inquiries about our coin parameters. This is why we have decided to share the most important numbers and related information with you. The hard fork provided a good opportunity to summarize this data once again, including the updated information.

• Coin name: ExchangeCoin
• Coin abbreviation: EXCC
• Coin type: PoW+PoS
• PoW Algorithm: Equihash
• Equihash N/K parameters: 144, 5 (ASIC resistant)
• Total coins supply: 32003133.2 EXCC
• Avg time between blocks: 150 sec
• Starting Block reward: 38 EXCC
• PoW/PoS mining reward split: 70/30%
• As seen in the main parameters, areas such as current block reward and total coin supply have not changed. Please feel free to contact us if you need more information about the EXCC coin.

So what’s next?

We have completed the hard fork, but it is not the final project for our team. It started the next wave of events that will soon be news:

Today we launched the new desktop wallet — Exilibrium (read more about it in our previous blog post), please make sure you learn how to migrate to Exilibrium from the Copay wallet.
Here is a short tutorial >>
You can download it here >>

• After you migrate to Exilibrium, you can start staking… and mining, to perform these functions you need to buy tickets (read more here >>)
• As earlier mentioned, thanks to the Equihash algorithm being used, mining can be done on a GPU. The GPU mining software is under development and will be launched soon. Therefore mining is possible only on CPU for now (you can turn on the feature directly from the Exilibrium wallet or use the binaries available on our Github release page).
• Soon we will also publish the new web wallet;
• Exchanges where we are listed — Coinexchange.io and TopBTC.com will resume deposits and withdrawals, as soon as they make sure the new blockchain is stable. Hopefully, this will happen next week. IMPORTANT NOTE: There is no restriction on trading; you can continue trading without any issues!
• If you need help or have questions — please contact our support team at support.excc.co >>
• It is a big day for our coin, so we are celebrating today.

Are we done? No, we are just getting started!

There is a lot going on in the background. Starting next week, we will post more news. You can expect announcements about new partnerships, details of Xult, and the introduction of our team members. So stay tuned!

Find us on social media:

https://twitter.com/xchange_me_
https://medium.com/@exchangecoin
https://steemit.com/@exchangecoin
https://twitter.com/EXCC_Team
https://t.me/cryptoxchangernet
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBws9hxnSXYv3NbxuHLuexg