March 19, 2024

Beam cryptocurrency review – confidential blockchain

Beam cryptocurrency review - confidential blockchain

Beam is a startup created in March 2018 by cryptocurrency professionals. After 10 months January 3, 2019The team launched the Beam coin of the same name on the market, a scalable, confidential cryptocurrency based on the MimbleWimble protocol.

What is MimbleWimble?

MimbleWimble is a protocol based onelliptic curve cryptography, which was created in 2016 by a developer under the pseudonym Tom Elvis Jedusor. Both the name and the nickname are references to the Harry Potter book series. There MimbleWimble is a spell that makes it impossible to speak clearly. Likewise, the blockchain on this protocol cannot disclose information about user actions.

What is Beam cryptocurrency?

Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum and mostexisting cryptocurrencies in which all information about all participants and their transactions is open and accessible to everyone, Beam completely hides information about participants in transactions, amounts and balances of wallets.

The MimbleWimble protocol allows you to achieveprivacy, using standard well-researched cryptographic methods, and also has a compact blockchain: up to 10 times smaller than Bitcoin, according to the Beam team. Previous generation privacy currencies such as Monero or Zcash scale much less well, with a blockchain size 5-10 times larger than Bitcoin.

The smallest particle of the Beam cryptocurrency is the grotto. It equals one hundred millionth share of BEAM and is named after Jens Groth, a professor of cryptology from London.

Technical characteristics of Beam confidential cryptocurrency

  • There is no concept of “address” in the system, and the user, using his private keys, controls the coins belonging to him, presented in the form of UTXO (unspent transaction outputs).
  • Limited issue (262.8 million coins) using periodic halving.
  • Mining is carried out using a modifiedversions of the Equihash algorithm on graphics cards (GPU). Since two algorithm changes were announced during the first year of operation, there are currently no ASIC devices on the market. We estimate that they will begin to appear in the second half of 2020.
  • Beam Confidential Transactions Do Not Causeincreasing the size of the blockchain, avoiding excessive computational costs, loss of performance or scalability while completely hiding transaction details.
  • Standard elliptic curve cryptography is used.
  • The blockchain does not store information about the sender or the receiver of the transaction.
  • Superior scalability thanks to the intermediate transaction aggregation algorithm allows you to maintain a compact blockchain size.
  • Implemented from scratch in the time-tested C++ language.

Project development

The ambitious plans of the Beam developers do not includenot only make the currency private, but also give users the opportunity for further reporting to auditors, legal authorities and financial institutions. Only the owner of the Beam cryptocurrency and only at the time the transaction is created will be able to save a record of it. If the user does not save a record of the transaction at the time of making the payment, it will be technically impossible to access information about it retroactively. If the transaction history is saved, then viewing it by third parties (auditors, legal authorities) is possible only with the help of a special key that is generated by the user himself.

Thus, the Beam blockchain, on the one hand,will ensure complete confidentiality of financial transactions, on the other hand, will allow you to comply with regulatory requirements. Today, Beam is the only blockchain that solves this problem.

The team is currently working on creating bridges to popular blockchains (Ethereum and others) to allow confidential trading of tokens from these blockchains on the Beam blockchain.

The possibility of issuing additional “smart” tokens on the Beam blockchain to support STO, ICO and other types of initial offerings is being developed.

In the medium term, Beam plansbuild a platform for issuing and trading various types of currencies and tokens, ensuring complete confidentiality of balances and transactions with the possibility of reporting for corporate users.

Beam financial model

During the first 5 years after the launch of the network inTreasury (Treasury) Beam will receive deductions of 20% of all coins mined by miners. Of these savings, monthly salaries are paid to the team, remuneration to consultants, investors and the non-profit Beam Foundation, which will manage the project in the future.

The selected financing model creates a balance of interests between all participants in the Beam ecosystem and guarantees its development in the long term.

Summary

Beam is a well-managed startup with ambitious plans that can be considered a long-term investment.

Read more about the coin on the official Beam website.

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