Compiled by: Karen, Foresight News
Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake proposed Ethereum's ultimate design at today's Devcon conference, with the core being a large-scale redesign of Ethereum's consensus layer. He named this proposed design and fork 'Beam'. So, what vision does Beam Chain carry? How is its technical architecture and implementation plan unfolding?
Beam Vision
Why is there a need for a large-scale redesign of the consensus layer? Justin Drake believes that the current beacon chain is outdated, its specifications frozen five years ago, and in recent years, there have been many breakthroughs in areas such as MEV mitigation, SNARKS (zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive arguments), and zKVMs (zero-knowledge virtual machines), making the redesign of the consensus layer particularly urgent.
First, it should be noted that since the launch of the beacon chain in 2020, Ethereum has experienced a significant fork upgrade each year. From the increase in the sync committee in 2021, to the completion of the merger in 2022, to the support for staking withdrawals in 2023, and proto-danksharding in 2024, each step has witnessed Ethereum's growth and transformation. In 2025, Ethereum will implement the Electra fork, including the implementation of EIP-7251 (MaxEB). In the coming years, Ethereum will also undergo some progressive forks.
However, after these progressive forks, Justin Drake believes we may face an unprecedented challenge - the Beam fork. This is a 'quantum leap' in the consensus layer, capable of integrating multiple upgrades into a single fork.
It is worth mentioning that Beam specifically targets the consensus layer, excluding the blob and execution layers (including EVM) because the opportunities to modify the blob and execution layers are quite limited, while the consensus layer is not directly used by applications, allowing for more design and change opportunities.
The roadmap for the Beam Chain consensus layer includes three categories: block production, staking, and cryptography. In terms of block production, resistance to censorship is achieved by introducing inclusion lists, decoupling validators from the block production process, and ideas like execution auctions; additionally, it may be possible to shorten the current 12-second slots.
Regarding staking, researchers broadly believe that optimizing the current issuance curve could improve the overall health of Ethereum. Additionally, reducing the amount of Ethereum required to become a validator and achieving faster finality are also key research focuses. In terms of cryptography, the main areas are chain abstraction, quantum safety, and strong randomness.
Beam Chain Technical Layer
Justin Drake believes that 'after PoW and PoS, we may be entering the era of zero-knowledge proofs in Ethereum consensus. In the ZK era, SNARKS will become an indispensable technology. The entire Beam Chain, and indeed the entire consensus layer, can undergo SNARKification. This is the time for zKVM to shine.'
It is noteworthy that the parts needing SNARK processing are mainly the state transition functions, which are the core of the consensus client. All infrastructure surrounding the state transition functions, such as networking, syncing, caching optimization, or fork choice rules, does not require SNARK processing. Ultimately, the state transition function is just a subset of the entire system.
Another significant use of SNARKS in Beam Chain is in aggregate signatures - using hash functions to achieve post-quantum aggregatable signatures. Justin Drake explains that thousands of signatures can be collected and compressed into a single proof, yielding a hash-based post-quantum aggregatable scheme that can also undergo multiple aggregations.
In addition, Ethereum will continue to utilize existing infrastructure, including libp2p, SimpleSerialiZe, PySpec, and Protocol Guild.
Beam Chain Roadmap
Justin Drake has developed a detailed plan for the launch of Beam Chain, with the specification development process starting in 2025, construction beginning in 2026, and testing starting in 2027 to ensure Beam Chain meets production-level standards and can be safely deployed on the mainnet. According to the roadmap below, the mainnet deployment may go live after 2029 or 2030.
Justin Drake plans to start drafting executable specifications next, which will ultimately be streamlined to about 1000 lines of Python code.
In addition, two client development teams (the Zeam team in India and the Lambda team in South America) have expressed interest in developing Beam Chain clients.