Original title: “Will Beam Chain bring five new changes to Ethereum?” 》
Original source: Ebunker Chinese
As we all know, Ethereum was born with PoW proof of work and successfully converted to PoS proof of equity in 2021. In this regard, Justin Drake, a core researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, believes that although the beacon chain was very effective when PoS was first introduced, it has accumulated some “technical debt” in the past five years and its design did not take advantage of the decentralized system. Cutting-edge technologies (such as zero-knowledge proofs). Therefore, Ethereum’s consensus layer is in urgent need of a major change.
In a recent speech at Devcon in Bangkok, Ethereum researcher Justin Drake announced a proposal to overhaul the Ethereum consensus layer, called “Beam Chain.”
This is part of Ethereum’s long-term roadmap, allowing Ethereum to take advantage of the current breakthroughs in ZK cryptography, aiming to greatly improve network scalability and performance without launching a new network. There is no doubt that it is one of the most important upgrades to Ethereum in the next 3–5 years.
Beam Chain is not a new blockchain in the literal sense, but a new infrastructure built within the Ethereum main network. It will greatly improve the transaction speed, security and efficiency of the L1 main network. Some people interpret Beam Chain as Ethereum 3.0. This is a misunderstanding because Beam Chain only solves the consensus layer problem and does not change the data layer (such as blob channel) or execution layer (such as Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)).
The five core changes of Beam Chain are:
1. Faster block confirmation: Enable 4-second slot time and single-slot finality
2. Not at the expense of decentralization: retain or improve current decentralization guarantees
3. Lower the Staking threshold: Let ETH Staking drop from 32 ETH to 1 ETH
4. Protect ordinary users: eliminate MEV based on block reorganization
5. Future-proof: Making the Ethereum network quantum-resistant
Beam Chain upgrade ideas and principles
1. Increase block production
Higher throughput: Beam Chain will increase block production to 3 times the current level to improve Ethereum’s transaction capabilities.
Censorship Resistance: The introduction of FOCIL (Fork Optional Enforcement Inclusion List) enhances censorship resistance, ensuring that transactions cannot be easily excluded by bad actors.
Execution Auction & Isolation of Validators: Validators will be isolated using execution auctions to ensure stronger performance and decentralization, and to protect more users from MEV intrusion.
Faster finality: Ethereum will feature single-slot finality and 4-second block times, confirming transactions faster and improving network efficiency.
Interestingly, the exchange no longer needs to wait for block confirmation on 1/32, 2/32, 3/32… because it can be confirmed in a single block in the future.
2. Improve staking
Improved issuance model: Changes to the reward issuance model for validators to make staking more rewarding.
Lower staking requirements: Independent validators only need to stake 1 ETH, which is far lower than the current 32 ETH threshold, making independent staking simpler and more popular.
We believe that Ethereum needs to accommodate more nodes to participate in the consensus while speeding up, without changing the equipment hardware threshold, and break through the impossible triangle of staking. This is really thanks to ZK technology, which is indeed a significant step forward. Leading the industry.
3. Enhance security
Post-quantum cryptography: Ethereum will implement quantum-resistant cryptography to ensure that the network is protected from the threat of quantum computing, taking the first step towards becoming quantum-resistant for mainstream blockchains.
zkSNARK and zkVM integration: Zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) will be integrated with Ethereum via zkSNARK and zkVM to further improve privacy, scalability, and security.
SNARKification of the blockchain: Ethereum will use RISC-V to SNARK the blockchain, a process that can improve the efficiency and scalability of proof generation. SNARKs are a compact form of zero-knowledge proof that allow a party to prove that it possesses information without revealing the information or requiring any interaction between the prover and verifier.
In short, we can summarize it as: let the entire Ethereum be directly ZK-ified.
Enhanced randomness: Ethereum will also introduce strong randomness to ensure fairness in key network processes such as selecting validators.
Reduced MEV risk: Better censorship resistance minimizes the proliferation of bots such as sandwich attacks.
4. Working principle
Cryptozoologists have made significant progress on SNARKs since the design of Ethereum’s current consensus layer (Beacon Chain) was finalized. By SNARKing Ethereum’s state transition function (i.e., the state change messages that validators integrate to maintain a correct view of the blockchain), 4-second slot times and single-slot finality are achieved.
On the one hand, the reduction in block production and finality times can reduce waiting times and have a positive impact on the Ethereum L1 transaction experience;
On the other hand, it can also eliminate the potential value extracted from transactions and reduce technical debt at the consensus layer through remote block reorganization strategies.
Additionally, SNARKification will make the Ethereum network quantum-resistant, a must-have feature for future blockchains.
Beam Chain will promote the upgrade of Ethereum from the following aspects:
Sharding to speed up processing: Ethereum Beam Chain will use sharding technology to divide data into smaller parts (shards) to process multiple transactions at the same time. This will reduce transaction bottlenecks and speed up transaction times.
Quantum-resistant security: Ethereum will utilize cryptography that is ahead of its time to ensure that even future super quantum computers cannot breach the security of the network.
Integration with the Ethereum roadmap: Beam Chain is not a standalone network, but an integrated stage of Ethereum’s roadmap to expand and improve security for the next 5 years.
5. Significance
Beam Chain is critical to Ethereum’s ability to handle the growing number of decentralized applications – it can enhance Ethereum’s scalability, reduce transaction costs, and improve overall security, allowing the network to grow over time. Moving forward supports more users and complex applications.
Another major benefit of SNARK-based proof is that it allows ordinary pledgers equipped with standard hardware to achieve the above performance advantages. When the pledge threshold is reduced from 32 ETH to 1 ETH, with the improvement of network performance, the decentralization of the Ethereum pledger group ation will also be improved.
In particular, the lowering of the threshold, if combined with some related hardware equipment, such as Ebunker’s eNode, allows household-level verifier equipment to reach thousands of households, Ethereum will still be the most decentralized public chain with the most nodes in the world.
While Beam Chain’s vision will not result in immediate changes to Ethereum or significantly alter its long-term roadmap, its adoption will shift the priorities of roadmap development, accelerating the development of specific components (e.g., the current roadmap places Some important upgrades are set until 2029, and Beam Chain may speed up the arrival of important upgrades).
If Beam Chain gains enough community support, developers can begin developing specifications next year, with production-grade code written by development customer teams in 2026, tested in 2027, and finally deployed securely on the Ethereum mainnet. Although the implementation of Beam Chain seems relatively far away, for a decentralized development of open source software, these security redundancies are extremely necessary.
In a word, Beam Chain has solved the past “technical debt” in one fell swoop through the ZK route. These improvements are expected to greatly improve its L1 functions while retaining Ethereum’s “world-class decentralization”.
At the same time, long-term solutions such as quantum resistance introduced by new ideas put Ethereum’s consensus layer into “maintenance mode”, which ensures that Ethereum remains safe, efficient, and adaptable for decades to come, thereby enabling future innovations Without the need for disruptive redesign.
Ethereum is still working tirelessly to make long-term plans. This is an exciting update for the blockchain and the entire industry. It also allows us to maintain an optimistic foundation for Ethereum in today’s turbulent market conditions. .
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