protocol
Beam is a startup created in March 2018 by cryptocurrency professionals. After 10 months on January 3, 2019, the team launched the same-named Beam coin, a scalable, confidential cryptocurrency based on the MimbleWimble protocol.
What is MimbleWimble?
MimbleWimble is a protocol based on elliptic curve cryptography, which in 2016 was created by the developer under the pseudonym Tom Elvis Jedusor. Both the name and the pseudonym are references to the Harry Potter series of books. There, MimbleWimble is a spell that made it impossible to speak clearly. Similarly, the blockchain on this protocol cannot disclose information about user actions.
What is cryptocurrency Beam?
Unlike Bitcoin , Ethereum and most existing cryptocurrencies, in which all information about all participants and their transactions is open and accessible to everyone, Beam completely hides information about participants of transactions, amounts and balances of wallets.
The MimbleWimble protocol allows you to achieve confidentiality using standard well-studied cryptographic methods, and also has a compact blockchain: the Beam team estimates that up to 10 times less than that of Bitcoin. Previous generation's confidential currencies, such as Monero or Zcash, scale far worse, having a blockchain size 5-10 times more than Bitcoin.
The smallest bit of cryptocurrency Beam – the grotto (groth). It is equivalent to one hundred millionth of BEAM and is named after Jens Groth, a professor of cryptology from London.
Specifications of Confidential Cryptocurrency Beam
- The system does not have the concept of “address”, and the user controls the coins belonging to him, represented as UTXO (unspent transaction outputs), with the help of his private keys.
- Restricted emissions (262,800,000 coins) using periodic halving.
- Mining is performed using a modified version of the Equihash algorithm on graphics cards (GPU). Since two changes to the algorithm were announced during the first year of operation, there are currently no ASIC devices on the market. According to our estimates, they will begin to appear in the second half of 2020.
- Confidential Beam transactions do not cause an increase in the size of the blockchain, avoiding excessive computational costs, loss of performance or scalability while completely hiding the details of the transaction.
- Standard cryptography on elliptic curves is used.
- The blockchain does not store information about the sender or the recipient of the transaction.
- Excellent scalability thanks to the intermediate transaction aggregation algorithm allows you to maintain a compact blockchain size.
- Implemented from scratch in time-tested language C ++.
Project development
In the ambitious plans of the developers Beam – not only to make the currency private, but also to allow users to further reporting to auditors, legal authorities and financial institutions. Only the owner of the cryptocurrency Beam and only at the time of creating the transaction will be able to save a record of it. If at the time of making the payment the user does not save the transaction record, then backdating access to information about it will be technically impossible. If the transaction history is saved, it can only be viewed by third parties (auditors, legal authorities) using a special key generated by the user.
Thus, the blockchain Beam, on the one hand, will ensure complete confidentiality of financial operations, on the other hand, will allow us to comply with the requirements of regulators. To date, Beam is the only blockchain that solves this problem.
The team is currently working on building bridges to popular blockchains (Ethereum and others) to allow confidential tokens trading from these blockchains on the blockchain Beam.
The possibility of issuing additional “smart” tokens on the Beam blockchain to support STO, ICO and other types of primary offers is being developed.
In the medium term, Beam plans to build a platform for issuing and trading various types of currencies and tokens, ensuring complete confidentiality of balance sheets and transactions with the possibility of reporting for corporate users.
Financial Beam Model
During the first 5 years after the launch of the network, 20% of all mined coins will be paid to the Treasury (Treasury) Beam. 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 ensures its development in the long term.
Summary
Beam is a well-managed startup with ambitious plans that can be considered as a long-term investment.
Read more about the coin on the official Beam website.
Publication date 07/02/2019
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