# Beam Chain - an ambitious proposal *Special thanks to [Justin Drake](https://x.com/drakefjustin) for key corrections and invaluable insights. Grateful to [@0xAbix](https://x.com/0xAbix), [@ashngmi](https://x.com/ashngmi), [Manoj K. Gorle](https://x.com/ManojKGorle) and [Suraj](https://x.com/esciiee) for their valuable feedback and review.* --- ## Introduction **What if Ethereum could finalize transactions in mere seconds, slash costs for users, and invite participation from anyone with just 1 ETH to stake?** That’s the promise of the Beam Chain, an ambitious proposal that could redefine blockchain technology. **Ethereum** has always been at the forefront, constantly evolving to tackle the demands of its ever-expanding ecosystem. From its genesis as a **Proof of Work** (PoW) blockchain to the transition to **Proof of Stake** (PoS) with The Merge in 2022, Ethereum has come a long way. Yet, challenges persist: network congestion, high fees, scalability bottlenecks, and barriers to validator participation. Enter **Beam Chain**—a visionary upgrade unveiled at Devcon 2024 by Ethereum researcher Justin Drake. As for now it is just a proposal but if things go as planned it’s a bold leap designed to supercharge Ethereum's scalability, decentralization, and efficiency. By leveraging cryptographic innovations like zk-SNARKs, Beam Chain aims to simplify consensus, reduce computational overhead, and make Ethereum more accessible than ever. In this blog, we’ll explore the Beam Chain’s design, its role in Ethereum’s evolution, and the potential impact it could have on the blockchain ecosystem. --- ## What is Beam Chain The Beam Chain is an upgrade designed to replace Ethereum’s current Beacon Chain, introducing a simpler, faster, and more efficient consensus mechanism. Unlike the current **Beacon Chain**, the Beam Chain integrates zk-SNARKs to efficient proof verification and achieve quicker finality. This enhancement not only boosts Ethereum’s scalability but also makes the network more accessible and secure by leveraging advanced cryptographic tools. While it supports the broader ecosystem's scalability by enhancing consensus operations, data availability and execution remain the responsibilities of separate layers in Ethereum’s modular architecture. Here are some key features of Beam Chain: 1. **zk-SNARKs Integration:** By leveraging zk-SNARKs, validators can verify block integrity without processing every transaction, resulting in a significant reduction in computational costs. 2. **Lower Staking Threshold:** It lowers the staking threshold from 32 ETH to 1 ETH making the network more accessible to the participants which will enhance the decentralization. 3. **Faster Finality:** Targeting a 4-second slot time (currently it is 12 seconds), the Beam Chain ensures faster transaction confirmations, enhancing throughput and providing a smoother user experience. 4. **Data Availability:** It doesn’t directly handle data availability, but enhances the consensus layer indirectly supports the modular ecosystem, enabling efficient operations for Layer 2 data solutions. According to **Drake**, after the dominance of PoW then PoS, we're now stepping into the era of zero-knowledge → **the zk-era**. ![zk_era](https://hackmd.io/_uploads/HyWkZlXE1x.png) The Beam Chain also supports **zkVMs**, or **Zero-Knowledge Virtual Machines**, which simplifies the process of SNARKifying consensus clients written in high-level programming languages like Rust and Go. This enables efficient proof generation and verification for the consensus layer, reducing computational overhead and enhancing Ethereum’s scalability. --- ## Beacon Chain and Its Limitations The Beacon Chain was a pivotal step in Ethereum’s evolution–a foundation for its shift to Proof of Stake (PoS), enabling secure and efficient coordination of validators. But as Ethereum grows, its limitations begin to show. Let’s uncover the challenges which are holding Ethereum back to show its full potential: 1. **Validator Accessibility:** Want to help secure the network? Oops you’ll need 32 ETH, a heavy price tag for most participants. This high threshold forces small stakeholders to rely on pooled staking, introducing concentrating power–exactly opposite of what Ethereum (decentralization) stands for. 2. **Block Finality Delay:** 12-second slot time might seem fast, but finality stretches to several minutes due to its dependency on multiple epochs. Today we want instant results, this delay feels like years, resulting in poor user experience and real-time applications. 3. **Quantum Threats:** Ethereum’s current cryptographic methods are strong enough to secure against classical computers, but the future with quantum computing advancements that could break existing algorithms. 4. **Computational Costs:** The energy consumption already reduced significantly when we shifted to Proof of Stake(PoS). But the computational resources required for validators such as processing power, memory, and network bandwidth remains considerable, and these high computational cost can become a major factor for its scalability. The Beacon Chain has its role, but its limitations are a reminder of just how much further there is to go. To overcome these hurdles and unlock Ethereum’s true potential–that’s where the **Beam Chain** steps in, clearing the path to a more scalable, accessible, and efficient blockchain future. --- ## Proposed Changes in the Beam Chain This Beam Chain consensus layer roadmap includes 3 major categories: Block production, Staking, and Cryptography. ![proposedchanges_beam](https://hackmd.io/_uploads/H1PVPemNkl.jpg) In these categories there are some more proposed changes, let’s try to understand them: **Block Production:** * **Censorship resistance:** With FOCIL (First-Order Conditional Inclusion List), no one can block your transactions, ensuring total freedom. With this, Ethereum guarantees complete censorship resistance, putting the power back in the hands of the users. * **Isolated validators:** The **execution auctions** make sure validators operate in isolation, free from conflicts of interest. This means fairer, cleaner blockchain operations for everyone involved. * **Faster Slots:** Block production happens in just 4 seconds. **Staking:** * **Smarter issuance:** The stake cap ensures that staking is balanced and accessible, allowing everyone from the small investor to the large-scale operator to benefit from their contribution. * **Smaller Validators:** With the new 1 ETH Orbit Staking, anyone can become a validator and contribute to Ethereum’s decentralization. It’s staking made simple, made for everyone. * **Faster finality:** With 3-slot FFG, Beam chain reduces the wait time, gives instant finality (currently it is 64-slot epoch, an epoch takes 6.4 minutes, and finality roughly takes 2 epochs(~13-15mins depends on % voted)), making Ethereum more reliable, quicker and more responsive than ever. **Cryptography:** * **Chain snarkification:** With Poseidon hash functions and zkVM, Beam Chain takes zero-knowledge proofs to the next level. And result? Privacy, scalability, and security without compromising on performance. * **Quantum security:** Future quantum computers can break current algorithms, but Beam Chain with hash-based signatures, making sure Ethereum remains secure even in the post-quantum era. * **Strong randomness:** While selecting validators, we need strong, unbiased randomness that makes Ethereum’s consensus system more secure and more trustworthy than ever before. The top four items (highlighted in green) are relatively simple to implement, offering quick wins. However, the remaining five are far more complex and will require significant innovation and effort to bring to use. One thing to note, Beam Chain is not changing the roadmap, but is just a group of upcoming changes all bundled together. --- ## Timeline for Implementation: ![timeline_beam](https://hackmd.io/_uploads/SkdZveQEyl.jpg) During conference at Devcon Justin said, > This is my most hated slide ever which basically says that It’ll take around 4 years from 2025 to 2029 to ship this extremely ambitious fork & people want things in the next 4 months and will get it in next 4 years. It's not like there will be a massive gap in between today and the next 5 years, there’s going to be a lot of stuff happening in the execution layer, data layer, and as well as in the consensus layer. ![gap fill_beam](https://hackmd.io/_uploads/HkyxDl7Eke.png) In addition, Ethereum will continue to use existing infrastructure, including lib p2p, SimpleSerialiZe, .PySpec and Protocol Guild. --- ## Critical Analysis: The Beam Chain is a bold proposal aimed at addressing the major limitations of Ethereum, but like all major upgrades, it comes with its own set of challenges and trade-offs. Let’s discuss some of its strengths and weaknesses: **Strengths:** * With a reduced minimum staking threshold (1 ETH instead of 32 ETH), which invites more participants to become validators and improves security by avoiding centralization around a small number of large stakeholders. * By reducing the block production time to 4 seconds and enabling finality in just 3-slots, due to this we can see improved transaction throughput, and is also crucial for real-time applications. This reduction in finality time would enhance the user experience by decreasing the risk of chain reversibility and any forks. * By integrating the zk-SNARKs in the Beam Chain, it provides an extra layer of security, making transaction validation faster and more privacy preserving. And I think this will be a very crucial step as Ethereum moves towards being quantum-resistant. * The Beam Chain enhances scalability by offloading transaction execution to Layer 2 rollups, reducing congestion and making Ethereum's base layer more efficient and decentralized. * With the introduction of FOCIL (First-Order Conditional Inclusion List) like mechanisms, the beam chain ensures that no validator can selectively exclude any transactions. In the current architecture, a block proposer can choose which transaction to include in the block as per incentives, this leads to censorship. But FOCIL reduces this by introducing conditional inclusion lists, which ensure that any transaction cannot be excluded randomly. **Weaknesses:** * While zk-SNARKs are very powerful, may be barrier for developers unfamilier with the technology, but they don't pose any significant obstacle for validators. As validators are primarily concerned with verifying zk-SNARKs, which can be handled with proper tools. However developers may face challenges in integrating & implementing zk-SNARKs, with less understanding of cryptographic concepts. * As verifying zk-SNARKs is easy and cost efficient but the computational cost of generating zk-SNARKs could lead to centralization, as this cost is too high which could concentrate power in hands of those with more resources, and small validators may be excluded which may undermine the goal of decentralization. --- ## Closing thoughts Before ending this blog, I want to share a post by @portport255 ![porter_post](https://hackmd.io/_uploads/Sk4WFxmEyx.png) The Beam Chain contributes as an important role in Ethereum’s evolution, with its great focus on optimizing scalability, decentralization, and security. By reducing validator staking requirements and improving finality times, it offers the promise of a more accessible and efficient Ethereum ecosystem. As Ethereum continues to evolve, the Beam Chain could serve as a stepping stone towards a future where scalability and security will not be a big deal. Eventually the Beam Chain may not be the perfect solution but it brings us closer to an Ethereum that can handle the demand or future i.e faster, more secure, more accessible, and way more decentralized than now. Well, Beam Chain is still a proposal, and only time will tell where it leads the future of Ethereum and blockchain, as its potential unfolds.