Bitcoin's strength and its weakness

From the very beginning or launching of Bitcoin by Satoshi Nakamoto, approximately ten years ago, it has generated a convincing revolution in the cryptographic and blockchain world, in which thousands of projects related to technology and research work, both in the area of medicine until the automotive industry have been developed.

However, if there is something relevant for people, it is the security of storing their money and executing their transactions.

In Bitcoin, the series of transactions go back to the beginning of a chain of blocks. This leads to not depending on a centralized entity, which is the main objective of the Bitcoin nodes. All participants in the system must agree, or use more professional terms "reach", "consensus", in an official version of the transaction history and be able to do so without trusting each other or any other person. The ability of the system to do so is the true strength of Bitcoin.

Even with all this, it is important to note that experts in technology developers have proven that using blockchain analysis, research has shown that there are always data leaks, which could very well come from exchanges, traders, OTC agreements or even collecting and grouping the blockchain data. This implies that the confidentiality of Bitcoin users' data, including transaction amounts, is not kept confidential, as they are permanently open and stored in a public ledger. Which, once the identity of the users is known, all their past and future transactions, as well as their balance, are directly related to them as a person. This means that it would be required to limit the visibility of transaction details, including transferred amounts and identities of participants and keeping as little information as possible about transactions in the public registry to avoid future analysis and potential disclosure.

This problem posed by Bitcoin indicates that it has not yet been perfected with regard to one of its main use cases: the private transfer of assets in a peer to peer form. That is, there is no anonymity and confidentiality in the users' assets. Generating all this a great concern in blockchain users. This is where Beam appears on the blockchain stage, with its use of Mimblewimble technology to provide users with control, privacy and confidentiality of their assets in a peer network.

What is Beam and how is it related to Mimblewimble?

Beam It is a Blockchains, with privacy and confidentiality features, which puts all its assets under control of its users, providing confidence and security, with scalability efficiency and satisfaction in global demand.

Beam is based on Mimblewimble, which makes it a faster, more efficient, and more secure network, with high levels of confidentiality and privacy of the user's available data. the system. Its innovative design makes it a confidential cryptocurrency for future generations.

How does Beam relate to Mimblewimble?

Original concepts of Mimblewimble

MimbleWimble is based on two concepts originally proposed by Greg Maxwell, which are: Confidential Transactions and Transaction Cut.

Confidential transactions are implemented using a cryptographic commitment scheme that has two basic properties: hide and bind. This is like if you gave someone a locked safe with a message inside which only you know the combination. When the time comes, you can reveal the key and the person can make sure that his commitment is valid (binding) while he can not know what it was before the key was received (hidden).

The compromise scheme that MimbleWimble uses is called Pedersen Commitment which is achieved using elliptic curve cryptography and is of the form

C = r * G + v * H

Where r is a blinding factor, a secret key that hides the real value v and G and H are generators.

The entry and exit of a transaction is what is called the linear combination of two factors: a real value of the transaction and a blinding factor. In order to transfer the ownership of a UTXO (Unused Transaction Output), an issuer must reveal its value and blinding factor to the receiver, which in turn needs to create a new outbound commitment using a blinding different from the factor known only from he.

According to the linearity property of the Pedersen Commitments, there are two identical transactions: from A to B, and then from B to C, with which the intermediate transaction can be cut, resulting in a merged transaction from A to C , which is a valid transaction in the system.

The block is just a list of transactions, each with its list of inputs and outputs, a block can be seen as a large transaction too, which allows us to "cut", that is, merge all intermediates.

Since all that is needed to prove ownership of the UTXO is the value and the blinding factor only, there is no need to store any address in the block chain. After creating the transaction between two wallets, either online or using any other security mechanism, only the commitment is recorded in the blockchain. This means that no matter the resources of the attacker, no personal information can be extracted from the chain of blocks.

In addition to the Inputs, Outputs, Tests and rates, each MimbleWimble transaction includes the transaction kernel, which contains the difference between emitter and receiver blinding factors. Each transaction must contain zero non-interactive knowledge, rank test to ensure that the transaction value is positive without disclosing the actual value. All this is important since allowing the user to create transactions with a negative value would result in the ability to arbitrarily create new currencies that should be prohibited by the system. It is for this reason that Bulletproofs is used, a compact and highly efficient computational implementation of zero knowledge range tests that are attached to each transaction and verified by the system during the validation of the transaction.

Now, Beam is based on Mimblewimble technology having smaller blocks than any other block chain, which gives it maximum scalability and makes it a more fast and efficient

What can Beam based on Mimblewimble do?

Beam provides interesting benefits such as:

● Privacy: the user decides what information will be available and to which parties, having complete control over their personal data according to their will and the applicable laws.
● Confidentiality without penalty
● Trust configuration is not required
● The blocks are extracted using the Equihash work test algorithm
● Limited emissions using a periodic division in half with a total amount of coins ~ 210 million
● There are no addresses stored in the block chain, or the sender or receiver.
● Superior scalability using the cutting characteristic of the MimbleWimble blockchain.
● Enabling multiple types of transactions privately: escrow, time locked, atomic swaps, etc.

The Solution - Haz (Based on Mimblewimble)

Beam is building its network from scratch in C ++ based on Mimblewimble with which privacy transactions are enabled without obstructing the network.

With the technology of Mimblewimble, now Beam can scale to adapt to the massive adoption and, at the same time, maintain reasonable block sizes, which allowed total control over privacy.

Beam in a Nutshell

The adoption of the Mimblewimble technology means that Beam can allow users to send and receive money in a secure and private way. All this is possible through the result of the capacity of the Mimblewimble protocol, which eliminates the need for addresses and quantities in the verification of transactions.

The less each block is registered, and therefore the entire blockchain, it must support results in a faster, thinner and more scalable blockchain architecture. The privacy and efficiency of this architecture help each other synergistically!

Basically, instead of trying A -> B -> C; You can make Beam A -> C increase your privacy and decrease the load on the system!

Use case of Beam

Case 1:

Luis has six years in the world of cryptocurrencies, he has also gone that he has accumulated a great fortune. His intention is to continue storing his Bitcoins, but he has one drawback, which is the product of many transactions with other users who have asked him for advice in the cryptographic world, he worries that his fortune is on a public radar, and that someone can make a bad move or that they have knowledge of their purportedly private digital wallet.

You can not leave it in an exchange due to security issues and yet you can not leave it offline because you need to access your funds to invest and make purchases.

Recently, investigating the issue of decentralized companies and other blokchain was struck by a block chain called Beam, which could know the benefits of this company for your users, highlighting: your retention information will never be traceable.

With Beam, Luis no longer has any concern about his fortune in cryptocurrency, now he has the guarantee of security, privacy and confidentiality.