ECash isn't money, it's credit that's only useful with the server that created it. It's not tied or pegged to anything, it's completely trust based. The server can simply just break the connection with Lightning or whatever else they claim you're getting a share of.

It's basically an API token, but differs because it uses signatures instead of being mapped to a user account in a traditional database. The theory behind this being that with a sufficient anonset it could make interactions between a client and server a little more private by not having accounts. Unless the mint is a large bank or exchange though, this anonset is unrealistic, and large custodians present even worse problems for privacy because of flow capture on the settlement layer.

As is common, spooks and scammers have the twisted narratives of ECash's functionality to exploit users who don't have the capacity to question it. There's an active campaign with 10s of millions of dollars being invested into these mint architectures so that Bitcoin software might be future-compatible with dollarized government ECash. (read the ECash Act and understand it's an RFP signal)

The most insidious aspect is that even though ECash is useful at one mint, it's being astroturfed as a decentralized payments system by these spooks and scammers. The reason for that is because native Lightning makes Bitcoin a more serious threat to the established order.

Bitcoin is easily captured via institutions as a store of value, and so the "then they fight you" stage is against Bitcoin as a means of exchange. If Bitcoin leaked into the economy at large as a means of exchange it could no longer be captured as velocity would be too high.

This is why these scammers with their hands out to the tunes of 10s of millions of dollars are astroturfing ECash as a payment system, so the government/banks can simply stay in power by turning up their own e-mints.

The end-game is your Lightning wallet using a bank or government e-dollar mint.

Still prefer Monero

Happy to give you a rundown:

• Ecash is a technique to create digital money invented in the 80s by David Chaum
• It was the very first concept of cryptocurrency (25 years before Bitcoin)
• It's a bearer assets with amazing privacy properties, and in my opinion, it's the thing that is closest to physical cash in the digital realm
• Ecash is not stored in a database or a blockchain. The money is represented as digital data that you (the user) store in your wallet. It is not like Bitcoin, where you store keys to move assets on a blockchain.
• Historically, it had nothing to do with Bitcoin until some projects like Cashu started building it on top of Bitcoin.
• In its current form, it allows us to build custodial Bitcoin applications with very interesting properties: amazing privacy, censorship resistant, and programmable to name a few.
• Cashu is a protocol that describes how to build these things. All Cashu apps are interoperable.
• Ecash mints are centralized: they are service providers (that can be single server or a federation of a handful) – Ecash is not decentralized!
• But: we are lowering the bar of running mints so that many of these can be deployed, either for the purpose of serving a community, or for a specific website, app, whatever you can think of.

IMPORTANT: If you get ecash from a mint in exchange for Bitcoin, the Bitcoin are not in your control anymore. That means the provider can rug you! Be 150% aware of this and only use it accordingly (very small amounts, for daily spending, etc).

Shoot if you have more questions and check out https://cashu.space if you want to learn more.