My Entry Contest: Beam by @OriginalWorks

What is BEAM?

BEAM is a next generation confidential cryptocurrency based on an elegant and innovative
MimbleWimble protocol.
Things that make BEAM special include:

• 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 bloatingof the blockchain, avoiding excessive computational overhead or penalty on
  performance or scalability while completely concealing the transaction value.
• No trusted setup required.
• Blocks are mined using Equihash Proof-of-Work algorithm.
• Limited emission using periodic halving with total amount of coins ~210 million.
• 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.
• No premine. No ICO. Backed by a treasury, emitted from every block during the first five years.
• Implemented from scratch in C++ by a team of professional developers.

Introduction

Since Bitcoin, the first implementation of the idea of peer to peer electronic cash system proposed by Satoshi Nakamoto back in 2008 , the field of crypto currencies and blockchain based systems has exploded producing thousands of different projects, technologies and research papers. Today one can find such projects ranging from distributed computing to Enterprise solutions and applied to all fields from medicine to automotive industries.

However, the basic need for people to store their money and transact in a secure way without relying on a centralized authority is still the main use case and the most important, which is one of the reasons why Bitcoin is still the top cryptocurrency and is as influential today as it was almost ten years ago.

In Bitcoin, as in most crypto currencies since, your balance is represented by a series of transactions which can be traced back to the very beginning of a blockchain. In order to prove the validity of the system we need to make sure that each transaction in a chain is valid, and to do so without relying on a centralized entity, which is the main purpose of Bitcoin nodes and miners. All participants in the system must agree, or using more professional terms "reach consensus", on an official version of the transaction history and be able to do so without trusting each other or anyone else. The ability of the system to do so is the true strength of the Bitcoin idea.

Thanks for @OriginalWorks.