√

About Beam and how it will change the way cryptousers store value!

™
BEAM is a platform that wants to make blockchain user's nightmare(security) become a thing of the past. Beam is the tomorrow crypto based transaction keeper. In the sense that, insecurity of blockchain and cryptocurrency has made Beam come into being as a scalable and secure platform where users can store their valuable coins without worrying about someone tracing all the transactions made back to them,in the and discovering their private key which could lead to loss of valuables. As many crypto users have discovered this flaw, large quantity crypto holders who value their privacy can now rejoice as Beam brings an untraceable system of keeping transaction record like it never happened coupled with its anonymity.

Here are some features that makes Beam the future store of value;

● Users have complete control over privacy - user decides which information will be available and to which parties, having complete control over his personal data in accordance to his will and applicable laws.
● Confidentiality without penalty - in BEAM confidential transactions do not cause bloating of the blockchain, avoiding excessive computational overhead or penalty on performance or scalability while completely concealing the transaction value.
● No trusted setup required
● No addresses stored in the blockchain - no information whatsoever about the either sender or a receiver of a transaction is stored in the blockchain.
● Superior scalability through compact blockchain size - using cut-through feature of MimbleWimble BEAM blockchain is orders of magnitude smaller than any other blockchain implementation.
● BEAM supports many transaction types such as escrow transactions, time locked transactions atomic swaps and more.
√

How are many of the current blockchain solutions lacking privacy?

™
As it was believed by many when bitcoin came into existence in 2008 as having a secure and scalable transactional nodes built on the blockchain technology. Many have invested a lot in crypto which are sometimes used for exchange and store of value. But in recent years, it had come into discovery that the so believed to be secure is rather the opposite.
How?
When transactions (exchange) are carried out between bitcoin holders/miners, a record is kept. Bitcoin makes use of the private and public key. The public key allows for transaction and exchanges thereby making anyone to have access to the transactions carried out between two wallets as it was believed the no matter who gains access to those records, it can't be traced beck to the source. It was only a matter of time before this became possible as transactions can be traced to another one and unto another and finally to the very origin of the coin leading to the source(owner), which can make such tracer gain access to the holder's private key. It's not secure after all.

Mimblewimble, the core technology behind Beam!

The core tech of Beam is built on two concepts written by an anonymous author which are:

(A) Confidential Transactions.
(B) Transaction Cut - Through.

√ The confidential transaction involves a cryptographic commitment scheme which consists of two properties "hiding and binding".
For example , an artifact holding sacred items,passed down from generations, and only accessible when the previous generations sees decides its time to pass on the content and leave it in care of the new generation. They can them show the new generation how to access the artifact and preserve the family's treasure(blinding) while the new generation cannot know what the artifact really was until the unveiling (hiding).

√ The transaction cut-through. When a transaction involves A giving B some amount of valuables and B gibing the received value from A to C. Why not remove 'B' and transfer directly to 'C' as it involves the same amount of value. Extending this approach to the entire chain, we get a system that only needs to store the current UTXO( unspent transaction output), instead of entire transaction history. Instead of including the whole transaction details , only the header is needed. This is used to ascertain who the transaction is coming from, after a unique blinding factor has been established between two wallets , no address is needed as knlu the parties commitment will show, making it totally untraceable to anyone. You can't possibly come from Los Angeles to Washington to look for someone you don't know his residential address, that's if he lives in Washington to begin with.

MimbleWimble utilizes a well known commitment scheme called Pedersen Commitment that achieves this using Elliptic Curve Cryptography and is of the form C = r * G + v * H .
Where r is a blinding factor, a secret key hiding the real value v and G and H are generator point on a specific elliptic curve.

How does allowing smaller blocks increase performance and scalability (Mimblewimble)?

™
When blocks are smaller, it becomes easy to combine them together and by doing so,enables the fact that when outputs are created and destroyed, it is as if they never existed, thereby increasing performance and scalability. All that is required is the header to create a confidentiality sign and eliminating the need to show wallet address thereby increasing privacy and promoting security.

Why is it important to have privacy for a "store-of-value" cryptocurrency?

™
Your valuables' estimate should be known only to you alone or to any other person authorised by you. How would you feel when some unauthorized user gain access to your storage?. Bad right?. Yeah. Now it's crypto, cryptocurrency can easily be stolen or hacked and become untraceable within minutes like it never existed self. To avoid theft, loss, porosity, the privacy of your store of value shouldn't be joked with. When your valuables are in safe conditions, transactions between wallets are carried out easily and freely without interference.

use cases

™
(A) Mike is a crypto trader. He trades at least 20 times a day with different wallets thereby recording about 600+ transactions in a month. Seeing the number of transactions carried out by mike, an anonymous person noticed this and thought of it as "with the amount of transactions mike has made, he'll definitely posses a large sum of crpto'. He then trace all Mike's transaction and gained access to his personal information, making Mike lose all his coins.
Had it been mike knew about Beam, such transactions showing his wallet address wouldn't have been visible as only his header (confidentiality sign between two wallets) will show and will therefore be untraceable. Sorry mike!!.

(B) Rachel a business woman who deals in highly valuable low-weight items such as jewels and diamonds. She prefer to receive payments with crypto rather than cash or other sore of value. Seeing the fact that she's a business woman who carries out day-in day-out business. knowing she's not totally secure , she made several enquiry on how to make her account secure tightly but all prove to no avail, but she continues anyway hoping to find a solution soon. Her research lead her to Beam. Now she can receive payment without worry and enjoy her privacy.

In conclusion;
I never really placed so much confidence in Cryptos privacy. Someone said to use private keys with unthinkable combinations to make your key unguessable, sooner or later, someone somewhere is going to crack it. Now Beam is here, do you really need a combination of 30 inputs for your password?, probably anyways , depending on your own perspective. But, to me, I don't think so. Beam ensures utmost security with scalability to deliver the most secure mode of transaction, treating every transaction you carried out like it never existed.

---

---

---

Thanks for reading. @jaybhe appreciates.

To learn more about Beam. You can visit their website

Beam mimblewimble paper

Beam position paper

This is an @originalworks writing contest. To participate click here

This is the link to my twitter post

Beam2018 beamtwitter