Justin Drake, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, proposed the final design of Ethereum at the Devcon conference today. The core of it is a large-scale redesign of the Ethereum consensus layer. He named this proposed design and fork "Beam". So, what exactly is the vision of Beam Chain? How are its technical architecture and implementation plans developed?
Beam Vision
Why a massive redesign of the consensus layer? Justin Drake believes that the current beacon chain is outdated and its specifications were frozen five years ago. In addition, in recent years, MEV mitigation, SNARKS (zero-knowledge concise non-interactive argument), zKVMs (zero-knowledge virtual machine) and other industries have made progress. There are many breakthrough developments, so the redesign of the consensus layer is particularly urgent.
Source: Foresight News
The first thing to point out is that since the launch of the beacon chain in 2020, Ethereum has ushered in an important fork upgrade every year. From the addition of the sync committee in 2021, to the completion of the merger in 2022, to staking withdrawal support in 2023, and proto-danksharding in 2024, every step has witnessed the growth and transformation of Ethereum. In 2025, Ethereum will implement the Electra fork, including the implementation of EIP-7251 (MaxEB). Ethereum will also undergo some progressive forks over the next few years.
However, after these progressive forks, Justin Drake believes that we may face an unprecedented challenge - the Beam fork. This is a "quantum leap" in the consensus layer, which enables the batching of multiple upgrades into a single fork.
Source: Foresight News
It is worth mentioning that Beam specifically targets the consensus layer and excludes blobs and execution layers (including EVM). This is because the opportunities to modify blobs and execution layers are quite limited. On the other hand, the consensus layer is not directly used by applications. , there is a relatively large opportunity for design and change.
In the Beam Chain consensus layer roadmap, there are three categories: block production, staking and cryptography. In terms of block production, we can resist censorship by introducing inclusion lists, decouple validators from the block production process, and have ideas like executing auctions. In addition, the current 12-second slot time may be shortened.
In terms of staking, researchers currently widely believe that optimizing the current issuance curve has the opportunity to improve the overall health of Ethereum. In addition, reducing the amount of Ethereum pledge required to become a validator and achieving faster finality are also focuses of research. In terms of cryptography, it mainly focuses on chain abstraction, quantum security and strong randomness.
Source: Foresight News
Beam Chain technology layer
Justin Drake believes that "after PoW and PoS, we may be entering the era of zero-knowledge proof of Ethereum consensus. In the ZK era, in this era, SNARKS will become an indispensable technology. The entire Beam Chain, and even the entire consensus layer Everything can be SNARKed. This is where zKVM comes into play.”
It is worth noting that the part that requires SNARK processing is mainly the state transition function, which is the core of the consensus client. All infrastructure surrounding the state transition function, such as networking, syncing, cache optimization, or fork choice rules, does not require SNARK processing. Ultimately, the state transition function is only a subset of the entire system.
Source: Foresight News
Another place where SNARKS is heavily used in Beam Chain is in aggregate signatures - using hash functions to implement post quantum aggregatable signatures. Justin Drake explained that thousands of signatures can be collected and compressed into a proof, which together results in a post-quantum aggregation scheme based on hashing, and the aggregation can be aggregated multiple times.
In addition, Ethereum will continue to use existing infrastructure, including libp2p, SimpleSerialiZe, PySpec and Protocol Guild.
Source: Foresight News
Beam Chain Roadmap
Justin Drake has made a detailed plan for the launch of Beam Chain. The relevant specification process will be launched starting in 2025, construction will begin in 2026, and relevant testing will be launched starting in 2027 to ensure that Beam Chain reaches production-level standards. And can be safely deployed to the mainnet. Judging from the roadmap below, the mainnet deployment time may be online after 2029 or 2030.
Source: Foresight News
Justin Drake plans to next start writing an executable specification, which will eventually be reduced to about 1,000 lines of Python code.
Source: Foresight News
In addition, two client development teams (the Zeam team in India and the Lambda team in South America) have expressed interest in Beam Chain client development.
[Disclaimer] There are risks in the market, so investment needs to be cautious. This article does not constitute investment advice, and users should consider whether any opinions, views or conclusions contained in this article are appropriate for their particular circumstances. Invest accordingly and do so at your own risk.
This article is reprinted with permission from: (Foresight News)
Original author: Karen, Foresight News
"Ethereum 3.0 is coming!" What is Beam Chain? Rely on 3 keys to make old chains look brand new. This article was first published in "Crypto City"
