Justin Drake, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, announced a new consensus layer upgrade proposal called “Beam Chain” during Devcon on Tuesday. The ambitious project aims to overhaul Ethereum’s consensus mechanism by 2030.
What is the Ethereum Beam Chain?
“Beam Chain is a complete redesign of Ethereum’s consensus layer.” He explained Porter, a prominent figure in the ETH community known for his work with ZK-SNARK technologies. He added: “Why are we proposing a massive redesign now? The Beacon Chain, Ethereum’s current consensus chain, is now five years old. There was a lot of new research that we could include in Beam Chain.
Many areas of improvement that have emerged since Beacon Chain’s founding aim to be addressed through comprehensive reform. This includes reducing technology debt that has built up over time, improvements in non-interactive knowledge argument (SNARK) technology, and improvements in maximum extractable value (MEV) mitigation.
One of the core focuses of the Beam series is to strengthen resistance to censorship. Porter highlighted offering “better censorship resistance with FOCIL (first-order consensus in layer), isolated validators with execution auctions, and faster slots.” These changes aim to further decentralize block production and make it more resilient to potential censorship attempts.
Beam Chain proposes significant modifications to the staking mechanism in Ethereum. Notably, it plans to reduce the minimum staking requirement from 32 ETH to just 1 ETH. “Better issuance, smaller validators (1 ETH), and faster finality,” Porter noted.
Cryptographic improvements are at the heart of Beam Chain’s proposal. The initiative aims to “narrow down the entire ray state transition function”, taking advantage of the latest advances in zero-knowledge proofs. Porter stated that “RISC-V has become the de facto standard for zkVMs.”
Furthermore, Beam Chain seeks to achieve quantum security by adopting “hash-based signatures, hash-based SNARKs, and block signatures,” ensuring that the network remains secure in the face of future quantum computing threats.
By 2025, the Ethereum Foundation intends to formulate a comprehensive specification for the Beam Chain, and in 2026, production code development will begin. Testing phases will come next, and full deployment is scheduled for 2029-2030. “Some of these require big changes, so it may be better to rework everything at once,” Porter added.
Beam Chain also presents an opportunity for new aligned customer teams globally. Porter highlighted potential collaborations with teams such as Zeam in India and LambdaClass in South America.
Implications for the Ethereum ecosystem
The proposed changes have significant implications for existing stakeholders, especially those involved in staking. Cryptoengineer Jin, associated with Hyperobject and Nuffle Labs, subscriber His insight into the potential market impact via X.
“Reducing the validator requirement to 1 ETH leads to crazy changes in the market structure: betting pools and exchanges lose the captive market with the lowering of the 32 ETH barrier, breaking the existing oligopoly, fee compression is inevitable, and forced business model pivot,” Jin noted.
Jain also noted that validator rewards could face “massive dilution,” with current yields of around 4% APR likely to fall below 2% due to increased competition and more validators entering the network.
The changes could lead to more ETH being tied up in staking contracts, which could reduce selling pressure from yield farmers. However, lower yields may result in lower demand for staking among investors looking for higher yields.
“Harvester becomes a layer of commodity infrastructure,” Jin noted. This shift requires adaptation within the financial derivatives market. “The entire derivatives ecosystem must evolve or die,” Jain warned.
At press time, Ethereum was trading at $3,252.
Featured image created with DALL.E, a chart from TradingView.com
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