What are Cash Accounts?

Cash Accounts is a decentralized alias system, which replaces traditional Bitcoin Cash addresses with a much simpler to remember and permanent alternative. Essentially, they function as an alternative address format that simplifies the exchange of information required for sending money between users.

A Cash Account is used to replace an address like this one qpv9zu8xfh8p58pcp94qhen7x2mtwc76yytg7nv4zp for something simpler in the format <USERNAME>#<NUMBER>.

Let’s take an example. Suppose Satoshi has the following address: qpv9zu8xfh8p58pcp94qhen7x2mtwc76yytg7nv4zp. The corresponding Cash Account is: Satoshi#99344. Therefore, if a user wanted to send you money, instead of copying or scanning the address, they could make a payment to Satoshi#99344 from their wallet and Satoshi would automatically receive their BCH at the original address.

The main disadvantage of this system is that, because the alias is associated with a single address, all payments sent to the same Cash Account can be linked. This can be mitigated with the use of privacy technologies, such as CashFusion.

How do Cash Accounts work?

Cash Accounts is a decentralized system and does not rely on any authority issuing certificates or usernames, but uses the blockchain to openly settle Cash Accounts.

To register a Cash Account, a special transaction is generated containing the alias desired by the user and the address to associate this alias with. All Cash Accounts consist of a second numeric part, which corresponds to the height of the block in which this initial registration transaction is confirmed.

In this way, at the time of payment, the wallet accesses this special transaction and verifies, using the Bitcoin Cash security mechanisms, to which address the Cash Account is associated.

How to generate a Cash Account

Any user can generate as many Cash Accounts as they wish. The only real cost is the registration transaction fee, which is extremely cheap due to the low operating costs of Bitcoin Cash.

To do so, you can follow the steps explained in this section.

From Electron Cash

To generate a Cash Account in Electron Cash, it is necessary to have some balance in Bitcoin Cash.

The first thing to do is to go to the Receive tab, to get a new address.

Below the Receiving address field, there is another one that says Cash Account.Clicking on the green icon on the label to the right will open a new window offering to register a new Cash Account.

After typing the desired alias, click on Proceed to Send Tab.

The next window warns you to verify that the transaction is correct.

To register the transaction, click on Send, completing the shipment.

Once the transaction is confirmed, which takes about ten minutes, the account will be created and other users will be able to send money to that address using the Cash Account alias.

Supported wallets

Currently, the only wallets supported by Cash Accounts are Electron Cash, Zapit and Paytaca.

External links

Official website: cashaccount.info