BEAM: The Scalable Confidential Cryptocurrency

tonyryce95 (41)in #crypto • 6 years ago (edited)

Introduction

Since the inception of bitcoin in 2008 by the famous Satoshi Nakamoto, many other crypto currencies and blockchain based system has emerged in the crypto market. The sole aim of these crypto currencies is to provide individual the avenue to save their money on a decentralized platform: a platform that is not centralized, not controlled by government or a central body,and which uses the blockchain technology.

The projects on crypto currencies are now applicable to different fields ranging from Aviation, Mobile gaming, and Medicine, to various industries.

Transactions on the bitcoin blockchain before now was believed to be anonymous: information about transactions cannot be retrieved by third parties as the block chain generates pair codes to aid it sending and receiving processes but such belief is totally wrong.

The major problem facing the current blockchain system is the failure of anonymity as against believed, and the the need for confidentiality.

Failure of Anonymity and The Need for Confidentiality

Providing an inherent security for users data is thought to be the top notch in the blockchain trading system but researchers using blockchain analysis has shown that is not the case. Users information get leaked to the outside world either through OTC deals, exchanges, merchants and even the process of collecting and clustering the blockchain data. As this possibility surfaced, users on the blockchain system can be deanonymized and since all data, including transaction amounts, is open and permanently stored in a public ledger, third parties can have access to past and current users transactions.

BEAM is designed to address this issue of anonymity and provide confidentiality.

What is BEAM?

BEAM is a next generation confidential cryptocurrency based on an elegant and innovative MimbleWimble protocol. Source.
It is a coin majorly designed to store value rather than as a means of exchange.

What is MimbleWimble?

MimbleWimble is a new protocol built to multi-tasked itself to great effeiciency while enabling users to carry out confidential transactions. Built to address the flaws of anonymity and confidentiality witnessed on the existing blockchain system.

•Confidential transactions are carried out on BEAM through it MimbleWimble technology by using cryptographic commitment scheme which has two basic properties: hiding and binding.

MimbleWimble utilizes a well known commitment scheme called Pedersen Commitment, and it is built upon two concepts originally proposed by Greg Maxwell, namely Confidential Transactions and:

•Transaction Cut-Through: Large chunk of transactions processes can possibly be reduced to the minimal without affecting the authenticity of the transaction allowing MimbleWimble to work with smaller block.

Why BEAM?

• It provides users with optimum privacy: users decides on which information they want to be available and to whom.

• Inherent security for it users.

• Trusted set up not required.

• Mining of block are carried out using Equihash Proof-of-Work algorithm.

• Confidentiality.

• 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.source

Equihash Proof-of-Work algorithm

Equihash Proof-of-Work algorithm used on MimbleWimble is IO bond: requires a large amount of memory in contrast to the Bitcoin's SHA256 that requires a lot of processing power.

Use Case

Royce is a friend of mine who has made quite a fortune trading cryptocurrency on the blockchain. Royce is well aware that transactions history are stored on a public ledger book and he is afraid his account can be hacked and all his amassed wealth taken away.
I introduced him to BEAM, and with the MimbleWimble protocol Royce now feel secured.

Watch this short video about BEAM on my YouTube channel:

For more Information and Resources:

Beam Website
Beam Position Paper
Mimblewimble Paper
Beam YouTube
Beam Telegram
Beam Facebook
Beam Github
Beam Bitcointalk
Beam Medium
Beam Twitter